Finding Home
by jenn02134
Summary: A decision her parents made twenty-one years ago has left Claire Walker blissfully unaware of the life she was destined to lead. Now a grown woman with a career and a fiancé, she will discover that roots may be stronger than wings and that fate, once set in motion, will not be denied its due. *Rated M for language and lemonade.*
1. Chapter 1

**AN: Three years since my last story wrapped up and I'm finally back, making my fourth foray into Twilight fanfiction. This little story started out as a particular scene in my head that wouldn't go away. Hopefully you guys enjoy it. As always, contructive criticism is welcomed and appreciated.**

 **Disclaimer: I'm not Stephanie Meyer. I do not own Twilight.**

* * *

She could feel her heart thrumming in her ears as her feet pounded the pavement. She wanted to be anywhere but that place, anywhere that wasn't that musty room filled with the smell of sex and a betrayal of the worst kind, and so she ran.

She was great at running, metaphorically at least. And just when she gathered the courage to stop and enjoy what life seemed to be offering, it blew up in her face. It was inevitable, she figured. Derrick Jenkins had offered her a comfortable, promising life to go along with the shiny diamond that sat atop her left ring finger, which Claire mused now felt more like an anchor to the past than a symbol of a bright future.

Pausing two blocks from the building she'd just fled, she paused and gasped for a shaky, burning breath, hunching over a bench that sat at the entrance to one of the city's small greenways. She was a metaphorical runner, after all, not a literal one.

It was the middle of the day in this bustling urban spread. Businessmen walked to and from wherever businessmen always seem to be going. Mothers with children strolled casually past her on the sidewalk engrossed in whatever little Abigail or Logan or Paige or whomever was screaming about. A group of students from the technical college leaving the popular bistro across the street laughed at each other while looking down at something a classmate had just posted on some social media site or another. None of them seemed to notice an undistinguishable woman experiencing her quarter-life crisis while panting and rubbing an aching calf muscle, college softball days seeming much longer than three years behind her as she cursed her out of shaped-ness.

A faceless blond moaning under her now ex-fiance flashed in the forefront of her mind and Claire heaved up from where she was squatted down, stumbling to the other side of the bench to plop down and pull out her cell phone. Clicking on the home button with a groan at the loser with impeccable teeth staring back at her, a picture taken when they were first starting out, her first mission was to change everything that immediately reminded her of what had been flushed down the toilet not five minutes ago. A changed home screen picture here, a Facebook relationship status update there, and besides the ring on her finger it was almost like Derrick Jenkins and Claire Walker had never met. Aside from her name on their rental agreement and the belongings she'd abandoned not ten minutes ago, of course.

Her phone rang about a minute later. Her school-teacher mother had nothing better to do on a sunny summer afternoon, she realized belatedly, than scroll through social media for recipes and cute videos of baby animals and updates about her daughters' love lives. A phone call from her sister soon followed, as did one from her best friend, and she declined all of them. Her mother, Tallin, and Jules would have to wait. It was a time for introspection.

Claire Aiyanna Walker had moved, or rather, had been moved three thousand miles from her origins at the tender age of three by her parents after her mother had a falling out with her family. That was the explanation Claire had been given at any rate. No one ever brought it up because it made her mother cry and her father angry, so she and her older sister had learned at an early age to avoid the topic. Sure, she was always curious about exactly what they had left behind, but she'd never wanted for love or friendship, had been successful in school and sports, and lived a typical middle-America childhood. She looked somewhat different than her friends, with obvious Native American bone structure and dark features, and had experienced some taunts from ignorant children when she was young and sensitive, but as she grew out of early childhood and into her blossoming self-esteem the whispers behind her back about looking weird had faded away. A little heavy-set with deep-set dark eyes and pin-straight dark brown hair, Claire was a tomboy, an introvert, a bookworm, and she'd left the fashion and dating and popularity to her older socialite of a sister. A nurturer at heart, Claire had pursued a nursing degree in college and had graduated with honors, securing a position with the city's top hospital after volunteering in its pediatric unit all four years of school.

There was a boyfriend here and there, brief stints of romance that didn't last because none of it felt right. Her mother told her she was being melodramatic, but Claire always felt like there was a piece of her that was missing. She was happy, yes, maintained a positive outlook on life and didn't look past herself for validation, but no matter where she looked there was a sort of lack of fulfillment in her life.

She wasn't where she was supposed to be.

They moved around a lot when Claire was younger. Odd phone calls in the night and shouting matches between her parents always prefaced a hurried packing job and a change in location. Tallin had suggested their parents were top secret agents or on the run from the law or something equally as imaginative and fanciful, but Claire didn't speculate. It sounded ridiculous to her, even at 5, 6, 7, years old. They finally picked a place and stayed when Claire started high school, but not one single place ever truly felt like home.

It was a deep-seated feeling that had become firmly planted in the pit of her stomach after Tommy Pritchard kissed her during the last song of the Halloween dance in fifth grade. Nothing in her life after that seemed the same. Yeah, it seems kind of odd for a ten year old to have a life changing epiphany, but Claire swore by it. She threw herself into books and softball and extracurriculars to fill the void in her heart, but nothing and no one seemed to scratch the itch.

Fourteen years later and it was still there. Tommy Pritchard had started something that Derrick Jenkins certainly hadn't been able to stamp out.

Maybe that was why Claire was strangely not that upset about finding him in bed with the barista from the coffee shop in the ground floor of their building.

Plucking up the courage to call her mother after thirty minutes of staring into space and hundreds of curious looks from passersby, it unsurprisingly took half a ring before Dena Walker's voice burst out of the speaker.

"That rat bastard."

Claire answered with a chuckle. Trust her uninformed mother to jump to the correct conclusions. With a voice more steady than she felt, she said, "I'm not all the concerned, Mom. Dodged a bullet. I'm okay with it."

"Claire, what did he do? Wait till I tell your father. He'll kill him."

"Mom, you don't even know what's going on." Turning and laying down on the bench, not caring how grimy it was, Claire flopped her head back over the arm rest and put a forearm over her eyes.

"Well then, please enlighten me so that I can justify having your dad beat his ass."

Laughing, Claire crossed her feet at the ankles and absentmindedly tapped a toe to calm her nerves as she responded to her mother. "I'd really rather not talk about it right now. Just…I hate to even ask this, but could I come stay at home for a few days? Just until I figure out what I'm going to do, of course."

"Claire, honey, you know you can. Your father will love it, I think he gets tired of only having me here to talk to." Her mother went on a tangent about her father's increasing inattentiveness, which Claire, as usual, tuned out.

"Claire? Claire, are you listening? I swear, you and your sister-"

"Yes, yes, I was listening. Look, I don't think I can go back to work today. I'll be there in an hour. Love you. Bye." Digging her thumbs into her eyes and feeling slightly-but-not-really remorseful for her tone with her mother, Claire let out a huff of air and allowed herself one minute to sulk. One minute to feel sorry for herself and curse Derrick Jenkins into oblivion.

* * *

Three weeks had passed and Claire found herself still holed up in her childhood room. She and her sister had finally gone back to the scene of the crime a few days ago to gather all of her stuff, leave her ring in the toilet, and talk to the building supervisor about releasing her from her contract. Their next task was to find a place for Claire far away from Derrick Jenkins or anywhere she might run in to him, but apartments at a good price near downtown were hard to come by, so she decided she would brave the forty-five minute commute to and from work until she could find something suitable and vowed to find a way to repay her parents, who so far hadn't been nosey and hadn't sought out and killed the "rat bastard." They were currently out on a date night after Claire handed them a hundred dollar bill and told them to go enjoy themselves, needing some time to herself to process what her life had come to. If this mostly involved a Friends binge on Netflix and devouring a tub of chocolate ice cream, at least no one was there to witness her spiral.

Halfway in to "The One Where Everybody Finds Out," the phone rang. Claire hurriedly sat her ice cream on the coffee table in front of her and, still wrapped like a burrito in the ratty microfiber blanket her father refused to part with, shuffled to the phone mounted on the wall in the kitchen.

"Hello, Walker residence."

A throat cleared on the other end and the deep baritone voice of a middle-aged man filled her right ear where the phone was propped in between her shoulder and face. "Yes, my name is Chief Charlie Swan from the Forks, Washington Police Department. I'm trying to get in touch with Todd or Dena Walker."

"I'm sorry, but they're out at the moment. I'm their daughter, though. Is there something I can do for you? Or could I take a message?" Claire's brows knit in concern at the thought of what a police officer from her parents' hometown could need with them.

"Well, first I'm trying to make sure I have the right folks. I've called about seventy-five Todd or Dena Walker's so far and I haven't had any luck."

This was odd. If someone from back in Washington needed to get in touch with us couldn't they just get our information from my grandparents or my aunt? "What kind of information could verify the identity for you?"

"Uh, well, do you know their birthplace? Or a birthday would do."

"My dad Todd was born on May 9th, 1980, and my mom was born on April 17th, 1981. They were both born on the Macah Reservation in Washington State."

In a shocked tone he replied, "Those dates actually match up! They have two daughters, too. Is this Tallin by any chance?"

"No sir, that's my older sister. I'm Claire."

"Wait…this is Claire? Are you sure about that, young lady?" She heard a commotion on the other end of the phone, papers shuffling, voices murmuring, and a muffled "Get Clearwater on the phone, immediately."

Claire, a bit miffed, bit out a response. "I sure hope so. Otherwise I've been under some kind of delusion for the past 24 years."

He cleared his throat again and continued in a more reserved manner. "I haven't really been authorized to give this information to anyone else, but I don't guess Emily would mind too much if I talked to you."

"Hold on, Aunt Emily? Emily Young? Why? Is something wrong?"

"It's Emily Uley now actually, but yeah, she asked me to find you. This isn't too easy to say, kiddo, but it's about your grandmother. She's…she's dying."

The phone slid down to rest on her jaw as a lump formed in Claire's throat for the grandmother she didn't know but had always wished she did. A moment later, before Claire could stop her head from reeling at these new developments, the front door banged open to her left and her mother stumbled in giggling, her father hot on her heels. Her mom stopped abruptly as she took in the look on her youngest daughter's face, and her dad plowed into her from behind.

Her mother pitched forward. "Claire, what's wrong?"

"Who's on the phone, Claire-bear?" Her dad moved around her mother to take the phone out of her hand, putting it to his own ear. "Who is this?" He paused as he listened to what Claire assumed was the speech she'd just received from whatever his name was. Ten seconds in to the conversation, though, her father turned red and bellowed in to the phone, "How did you get this number?! I thought we made ourselves perfectly clear. We told them not to contact us for any reason, ever. That hasn't changed." With a look of disbelief, she watched her father slam the phone back on to the receiver and pace back and forth in the foyer.

"Todd, what the hell is going on? Who-"

"It's your damned sister, that's what." He interrupted her mother, whose face had gone ashen.

"How did they find us?" Claire had never seen her parents ruffled like this. She felt like she was in a haze, watching some surreal scene play out through a fog. What the hell was going on? What did they mean, 'find us?' Were her parents in hiding? Was some criminal hunting them?

"Dena, he said it was your mom. She's sick." They stared at one another for what seemed like hours. Claire swiveled her head gaze and forth between them, waiting for some kind of resolution or explanation.

When none came, she drew the blanket tighter around herself and inhaled then blew out a shallow breath. Biting her lip, trying to figure out how to proceed, she decided to ask the first question that came to mind.

"What the hell have you not been telling me?"


	2. Chapter 2

**A/N: I don't anticipate this story being super long, but with my track record who knows. All feedback and constructive criticism is welcome! Without further adieu, enjoy chapter** **two**! **Disclaimer: I am not Stephanie Meyer and I do not own Twilight.**

Waves crashed onto the shores of the outer edge of a sleepy, sparsely populated Native American reservation a few thousand odd miles away. Gusts of air swirled up the sand and knocked what few brave beachgoers were milling about with thick sea spray.

A lone figure sat atop a surfboard that he'd paddled out a few hundred yards from the rocky shoreline, staring into a marmalade sky welcoming the suns first morning rays. The air was fresh with the possibilities held by the new day, and the heavy air propelled the water into the perfect condition for his cathartic daily ritual.

She had loved the ocean. Being here made him feel close to her. Kept him from going insane after she'd disappeared from his life.

Some mornings he would wade through the waves just to watch the sun rise, imagining a dark haired girl giggling over the sound of the breakers. Other days he would submerge himself under his board a few seconds more than he should and feel the pain of his despair rip through his lungs just like it did his heart every second of the past twenty-odd years.

Quil Ateara remembered bits and pieces of the worst day of his life, like a choppy black and white stop-motion film that played in his mind over and over. A high-pitched scream of disbelief. A punch to the jaw and the sound of knuckles fracturing. The cries of a child that cut through his chest like a knife through butter. The screech of tires and his imprint screaming his name from the back seat of a car, pulverizing his already anxiety-lacerated heart.

He'd had such a short time with his imprint, his little angel, and it took five minutes for his future to crumble to dust in front of him. He couldn't blame her parents. If someone came to him and told him his baby girl was tied by the spirits to a sixteen year old freak he would've done the same thing.

Sam and Jake had convinced him to give it some time before running after them, so he'd realized a few hours too late that the Locklear's hadn't made the turn off the 101 towards the Makah Reservation. He'd followed her scent all the way to the airport in Port Angeles, and it disappeared into a gate for a plane headed to Seattle. He'd broken through security trying to get to her. Had almost phased in the middle of the airport terminal when he realized that she could be headed anywhere. He let security detain him in a last ditch effort to control himself and preserve the secret of his people. Jake had come with the full weight of the Cullen family coffers and bailed him out, assuring him that she would be found.

But those assurances never came to anything, despite the best efforts of everyone who cared about him. Jasper Whitlock had tracked Todd and Dena Locklear and their daughters to a small town outside of St. Paul a few days after they'd fled. Emily called the hotel they were staying at to try and make some sort of peace with her sister, to try to explain and to mollify her, but instead it spooked them and they fell off the grid. No traceable cell phone. No credit card records. No investments or bank accounts or tax returns.

His wolf had gone berserk the first few months. He exploded after Emily's failed phone call and subsequent emotional breakdown and simply hadn't had the willpower to change back, giving himself over to the animal he now shared his body with.

He went to St. Paul the following year, hoping for a miracle. By then any trace of the Locklear family was long gone and he wanted to kick his own ass for his inability to get control of himself sooner.

Months turned into two years, and then four, and ten. At some point after three or four more times tracking them down only to have them disappear again, he'd accepted that he may never see his Claire-bear again, accepted her parents' obvious choice to keep her as far from him as possible. He stopped looking, and the little girl that his world had once revolved around became entombed in his mind, never changing, never growing older, always in the forefront of his thoughts.

He'd helped Jake open a garage that straddled the border of Forks and La Push. Embry and Paul were more suited to help with mechanical work, though, so he'd taken over the finances with the guidance of Alice Cullen, investment banker extraordinaire. He found a knack for numbers so he eventually found himself as treasurer for the tribal council, channeling limited resources and spearheading economic diversification outside of the tourism industry.

Quil hadn't moved on. He didn't date. He didn't age. He watched his pack come back together and grow up and start families, nurture a new generation of wolves and foster a greater sense of pride within their small community. He watched his grandfather slowly pass on to the spirit world- the second most difficult thing he'd ever done.

As he sat bobbing up and down with the swells, legs floating on either side of the board he was straddling, he reminisced on a day nearly twenty-two years ago. A day in early September that had been the best day of his life: Claire's third birthday. Before the drama of telling her parents, before the absolute gutting pain of literally feeling the other half of him being ripped away. It had been just him, his imprint, and her wish that they be princesses for a day. He would do anything for her, then and now, right down to strutting around in a bright pink feathered tiara.

She would be twenty-five in a month. He wondered everyday what she looked like. If she was still the same funny, caring, stubborn person she'd been as a toddler. If she liked school or art or music. What kind of friends she had and what she liked to do for fun. What she did for a living. After her twenty-first birthday came and went he made himself sick thinking about whether she dated, had a serious boyfriend, was married with a couple kids, but decided that as long as she was happy that he would be too, if only he could see her one more time.

* * *

"Jules, I swear, they are hiding something serious from me and I can't figure out what it is."

"Look Claire, I'm sure they just don't want to rehash the past. Maybe you're looking too much into old family drama."

Claire walked briskly down a pristine hallway situated in the middle of the hospital wing she worked in, her cell phone balanced between her left shoulder and ear while she half-concentrated on the paperwork in front of her as her best friend tried to reason with her.

"I mean, what could YOUR parents possibly be hiding from you? Your family is cellophane-level transparent. Accountant dad. Teacher Mom. Tallin's a marketing executive and you're a freaking nurse. It's like the Stepfords or some shit."

"But Jules, that's what I'm saying. It's always been just the four of us as this like, immaculate family unit. I knew we had family that no one talked about, but I didn't think it was so bad that my parents didn't want them to know where we live or how to even contact us. And they refuse to even consider going back to see my grandma even though she's supposedly dying. They think it's some trick to get us back and they're even talking about moving. My dad basically forbade me from even talking about it. I don't understand what's going on. What if the detective or whatever is telling the truth? What if she dies without me ever getting to even meet her?"

Walking in to her section of the partitioned cubicles for her unit on the last day of her work week, Claire tossed the files in her hand down on her desk and sat heavily in front of her computer with a frustrated sigh. Pinching between her eyes with her thumb and forefinger, she listened to Jules breathe on the other end of the line.

Finally, "What does your sister think about all this?"

"That's the weirdest part. My mom begged me not to say anything to her. She remembers our grandmother just a little bit and mom wanted to tell her herself but I don't see that happening anytime soon. Plus Tallin has always been super suspicious of our past life or whatever, used to have nightmares about all this crazy, far-fetched stuff she thinks are actually things she remembers even though she was only five, so I think my parents just don't want to add fuel to the fire until they figure out what they're going to do."

Claire could hear her friend chewing on her lip through the earpiece, a habit she'd had as long as Claire had known her. "You've got some vacation days that you were saving for your honeymoon, right? What if you just, I don't know, go to La Push?"

"But my dad-"

"Screw your dad, Claire. You're a grown woman who was about to get married, for God's sake. I know you and I know you're gonna chew on this till your teeth fall out of your head if you don't find out for yourself."

She stared and the blinking light on her office phone that indicated she had a voicemail, hoping that if she looked at it long enough it would give her the answer to her life's current great mystery.

"I'm kinda scared, Jay. I don't know what I'm walking in to. They could actually be psychotic like my dad says and I'm headed for something straight out of Deliverance."

Jules laughed. "You watch way too much Netflix, C. Didn't you say a police chief called you? Hopefully it's not so awful of a scenario that even police forces from neighboring cities are in on the corruption."

Claire smiled for what felt like the first time in weeks. "I guess you have a point. Look, I'm gonna mull this over and I'll call you when I leave work. Thanks. For everything."

After a familiar goodbye they'd repeated countless times over eleven years of friendship, Claire shut off her phone and turned her attention to the charts on her desk. She tried for twenty minutes to focus on what was in front of her with little success. A voicemail from the floor supervisor requesting a brief meeting to go over a patient's discharge instructions afforded her the opportunity to get out of her own head for the time being.

She waved in greeting to the clerks assigned to the reception area for the afternoon as she passed by them on her way to one of the inpatient rooms. Nora Smith was a six year old burn victim who was being moved to a rehabilitation facility after undergoing numerous skin grafts over the past two weeks. Claire had taken a liking to the vibrant little girl, who throughout her stay had remained positive despite the amount of pain she was in and was always on the lookout for anyone willing to sneak her Skittles.

"How's my favorite patient today? Excited to be going on a new adventure, I hope?" Striking up a conversation while checking Nora's vitals, Claire glanced around at the family members gathered around her hospital bed, each with varying degrees of worry and relief etched across their faces. None looked more weatherworn than the girl's mother, but an elderly gentleman at the foot of the bed wore a mile-wide grin as he clutched a large stuffed koala bear Nora had passed to him as Claire placed a blood pressure cuff around her undamaged arm. As the floor supervisor came in with the plastic surgeon and attending doctor on duty to speak with Nora's parents, Claire watched out of the corner of her eye as what she assumed was the girl's grandfather made animal noises and cracked jokes to distract her while the doctors lifted her wound dressings for a final analysis of her progress.

With a pang of longing and feeling as if she were at a crossroads as she walked out of the room after her final exchange of hugs and goodbyes, she lost herself in thought over the choice she had before her. The image of Nora and her grandfather seared into the forefront of her mind, Claire mused about what it would be like to have an extended family. She loved her parents and had immense respect for them. They had worked hard and sacrificed to make sure she and Tallin had a comfortable, happy childhood. Being an adult and still leaning on her parents for advice and emotional support, she could appreciate how difficult it must have been for them to leave everything they knew behind and set out on their own with two young children. She knew that something terrible must have happened for her seemingly logical parents to have made a decision like that.

But she just couldn't quell the feeling inside of her that La Push might hold the key to her finally finding the fulfillment she had longed for as far back as she could recall. Pulling her phone out of her smock pocket, she pulled up a travel website with the fleeting thought that maybe she would just see what an airline ticket to the past would set her back.

* * *

Emily's mother was sick. Ovarian cancer. Lack of access to health care and general apathy on Aiyanna Young's part had meant they hadn't caught it in time and she didn't want to spend what she had left of her life taking treatments. Her only request was that someone find her oldest daughter and try to get her back home.

There was a part of Quil that wanted absolutely nothing to do with any of it. That part of him remembered how debilitating it was to feel like he finally had Claire within his reach only for her to slip away again and the emptiness come rushing back into the pit of his stomach.

But he wouldn't give up, and he wouldn't leave it just to Emily and Sam to go digging through the past to catch up to the Locklear's present.

A fruitless month-long search through every Todd and Dena Locklear in the continental US had been a colossal failure. They'd begun to assume that either they'd changed their identities or had left the country altogether.

Back at square one as of the previous night, Sam had called a Hail Mary and asked Alice Cullen, who couldn't see any of the imprints as a side effect of being blinded by the shapeshifters themselves, to keep a lookout on the future for anyone in town briefly disappearing as a result of contact with an imprint. It was an extremely long shot that also meant Claire would somehow find her way home from wherever the hell she was, but with no other options it was their only play at the moment.

Turning with the board and swimming hard to catch his first ride of the day, Quil almost felt like he could clear his mind as he dropped in to the crest of the breaking wave. Halfway through his descent into the controlled chaos, he saw Embry Call running over the beach at break neck pace, waving his arms and screaming Quil's name like a man possessed.

"Quil! Quil, get your ass to the beach! Quil!"

Half annoyed at the interruption and half amused at how exasperated his friend was beginning to look, Quil cut his surfboard back to the right and then swung himself left again, prepared to draw out his time before becoming embroiled in whatever stupid shit Embry had gotten into with Brady on patrol that morning.

"Alice found them, you dipshit! ALICE FOUND CLAIRE!"

Quil wiped out. Under the water, his perception went cloudy as he fought to remember where he was amongst the thrum of liquid in his ears and the loop of "Claire, Claire, Claire, Claire" circling through his mind. If Alice had found her, it meant that she'd somehow seen Claire coming to La Push.

In a haze, he propelled himself upwards, gulping in a breath of redemptive, salty air and swimming back in to shore as fast as his preternatural abilities and surfboard tagalong would allow him. Ripping off his ankle strap as soon as he got his feet on dry sand, Quil slung his board at Embry and took off in a dead sprint toward Sam and Emily's.

* * *

With the mantra, "Take a risk for once in your damn life, Claire" playing like a broken record over and over in her head, it had taken her all of ten minutes from the time she pulled up flight times to book a seat on a redeye into SeaTac that night. Despite the alarm bells ringing in her head, once she had made up her mind to go she wasted no time in seeing her plans through. An understanding boss had granted her two weeks of leave pending she could find someone to cover her already-scheduled shifts for the following week. Her unit had all been sympathetic to the dissolution of her engagement and then the illness of her grandmother, so it took her no time to pin down a couple of unfortunate but willing souls to divvy up her forty hours.

She called Jules from the car so someone would know where she was going in case these people really were psychotic and she was never heard from again, and then resolved that she wouldn't tell her parents anything about what she was doing to avoid the inevitable fight when they tried to stop her.

"Better to ask for forgiveness than permission," Claire murmured to herself after she'd snuck her and her suitcase out of the house under the guise of spending the weekend with Jules.

After an hour of Friday evening traffic, a half an hour wait at the security check, and two hours sitting at her gate mentally arguing back and forth with herself during moments of extreme anxiety, Claire Walker found herself sitting in a plane about to take off towards the precipice of her destiny.


	3. Chapter 3

**A/N: Yes, this is a real update. These characters have been in my head a lot recently and it's past time for me to finish the story they started. As always, feedback and constructive criticism is greatly appreciated. Also, as a general note, Quil and Claire's timelines are not in sync right now. They will be all caught up with each other in my next chapter.**

 **DISCLAIMER: I'm not Stephanie Meyer and I do not own Twilight.**

* * *

Ten minutes later Quil found himself bursting through the front room of Jake and Nessie's house on the southwestern border of La Push, nearly falling into Noah Uley, Sam's oldest son and one of the newer members of the pack.

"Dude, watch it."

He didn't spare a glance at the teen, instead making his way inside the small rag-tag circle that had formed before his arrival.

Jake, Sam, Sue Clearwater, and Charlie Swan stood askance around the room. Emily sat on the edge of an oversized matte leather sofa, her chin resting on folded fingers, elbows pressed into her knees as Nessie looked on from the other end.

Looking from face to face waiting for someone to start speaking, Quil crossed his arms, barely acknowledging the squeak of the wetsuit he was still wearing or that one bare foot was anxiously tapping the hardwood floor beneath him.

Finally taking the initiative, Jake looked from Quil to Emily and back again. "Alice didn't actually find them. But we've figured out how to get in contact with them now. She got us one step closer, or at least a step in the right direction toward finding the Locklears."

Or rather, as they were now referred to, the Walker family. Claire's parents had changed their surname from Locklear, allowing them to drop off the radar of the Cullens and the pack.

Apparently having nothing better to do, Alice had scoured every resident of Clallam County looking for clues as to whether or not the decisions they made over the course of pursuing Emily's sister would lead them towards achieving Aiyanna's wishes. And while she hadn't seen the whole family making its way to their corner of the Pacific Northwest, she had envisioned a local gas station attendant checking the license of a girl named Claire Walker when she bought a case of Barefoot Moscato and a pack of Slim Jims. The clerk hadn't paid any attention to the state on the license, so it had been blurry to Alice, but this then led to following a trail through the possible futures of other business owners along the 101 through Forks. She saw Claire checking in at the Olympic Suites Inn. She saw Claire grabbing a burger at the diner. Claire asking a man with Native American features questions about the La Push Reservation. Asking about a woman who lived there named Emily and her mother Aiyanna. Eventually got in deep enough to go back an undetermined amount of time prior to her showing up in Forks to see Charlie calling every Todd and Dena Walker in the continental US.

"In some versions Claire comes alone," Jake murmured. "In others, she comes with a couple different women. And Quil…"

Jake paused, seemingly uncomfortable as he peered through squinted eyes at his cousin, one of his closest friends. "Sometimes Alice loses her and she doesn't come at all. But sometimes…sometimes she comes with a man. A young dude who isn't her father."

Quil could feel all the air rush out of his lungs. Someone else had started to speak but all he could register was the subtle numbness that trickled from his racing heart straight down to his tingling limbs.

A man.

Claire was coming with a man.

Jake's words oozed through every synapse in his brain, playing on repeat for moments that seemed like hours until a hand sliding around his back jerked him from his dazedness. Emily had sidled up beside him and pulled his big body into her tiny one as fiercely as she could. He focused all his attention on where her skin made contact with his, using it to anchor himself to the room so he didn't phase right there in the middle of the Black's living room. In that soothing, motherly tone, Emily's next words creeped into his ears through the fog he was in. "If we play our cards right, we might be able to get our family back here."

Thinking of Aiyanna, Emily's mother, and disentangling himself from her embrace, he sat down heavily with a gruff snort in the spot Emily had just come up from, throwing his head into the back of the couch and throwing an arm over his eyes.

Just this morning out in the surf, not even two hours ago, he'd told himself he didn't care as long as Claire was happy and he could see her again. Confronted with the reality that she really may not be alone, he realized what a lying idiot he was.

He cared so much it incinerated every other thing besides how he felt about her. The imprint that had seeded itself so deeply into the mind and heart of the spirit warrior he shared his soul with commanded every moment of every day, and everything else was just going through the motions. She was a woman he didn't really even know, but still somehow instinctually understood he would remember and recognize better than the back of his own hand.

"Seth is at the station right now putting together a list of potentials so we can start making phone calls. In the meantime I'm gonna call one of my contacts in Seattle and see if they have any resources we can access." Charlie, cool calm and collected while addressing a tense room, looked over at Emily. "Is there any place we didn't try the last few times we looked that you can think of where your sister would go, just so we can maybe narrow down the search a little?"

"I'll think on it Charlie, but I feel like I've exhausted every possible thing I know about Dena."

And so, the next few weeks passed in a blur. It was an endless cycle of leads from Alice that never went anywhere: one week she saw Claire coming with various escorts and the next she never saw them even making contact, never saw Claire making her way back.

So Quil continued on, spending his eight hours a day at the shop managing the office while intermittently logging time at the tribal council office where he balanced budgets, acted as a liaison between the tribe and the US Bureau of Indian Affairs, worked with the small businesses the council was attempting to help grow, and attempted to aid Billy Black in creating a commercial code to take before the rest of the council and the elders for approval, something he hoped would make improving the economic status of his people a more broadly attainable goal. He had dinner with his mother or at Embry and his imprint Tala's house, and then he would patrol the late shift three nights a week, giving the imprints and the fathers in the pack who were still phasing time with their families and the younger wolves time for school work or, in the case of Sam and Jared's older sons who were running the bulk of patrols, time for video games and much needed sleep.

To Quil, the hardest part about all of it was that even if she did show up, there was no way that Claire remembered him. He spent countless hours of his life chasing a shadow that he could at least put a name to, could hear her voice like an echo from the distance, but she had no idea that he even existed. He had confided this to Nessie after one drunken night with Embry and Jake in the Black's backyard, before Jake and Ness had children and before he and Jake took over a good chunk of the responsibilities of the council.

"Quil," she had said, her eyes lighting up in that strange way that gold does when it's still molten and gooey. Like they knew some secret of the universe. "She knows she's missing something. There's a part of me that Jake fills that no one and nothing else can." He had given her a raised eyebrow and a side eye at that, just to see her blush and splutter. "I didn't mean it like that, perv! I just meant that there's a hole that...you know what, never mind." He had laughed at her and pulled her into a hug as an apology, but Nessie snuck her hand up to his face and hit him with the atom bomb of her thoughts. Her looking into Jacob's eyes and feeling a piece of her soul slip into place. Being away from him and always feeling noticeably bereft. "If what I know from the other imprints is true, Quil, she feels it too."

He didn't know if that comforted him or made it worse. To think of her somewhere feeling empty and alone, feeling like he did, was too much for him to bear when there was nothing he could do to offer solace to either of them.

* * *

A month after he started making phone calls, Charlie called Seth who called Quil freaking out that Charlie had found them. That Claire had been the one to answer the phone. Quil passed out in his mother's kitchen that night, overwhelmed by an emotion teetering between exuberance and terror. When he came to, Jake was standing over top of him, his mother with her head in her hands at the kitchen table and Emily standing next to her like she didn't know whether to chastise him for his theatrics or lay down in the floor with him and hyperventilate.

It was the first thing on his mind and out of his mouth. "Jake, is she coming?"

Jake laughed and offered Quil a hand which he ignored, opting to throw his head back against the floor and brace for the impact of the answer to his question.

"Alice says yes."

He breathed a lungful of air, deeper than he had in longer than he could remember, and he cried right there on the floor of his mom's kitchen, onlookers be damned.

This burgeoning feeling of excitement would begin to dissipate for Quil and even for Emily over the next few days when Alice couldn't pin down the when, the how, or the who. It could be days. It could be months. It could be years. Charlie had traced the unlisted phone number that belonged to the Locklears to a large suburb of Atlanta. It would have been impossible to find them without asking the Cullens to do something illegal, not that they minded. But Emily said if she knew her sister, they'd be moving soon if Todd's angry diatribe towards Charlie was any indication. Claire may not even live with them.

If they couldn't pin down the time it meant Claire was fighting an internal battle and it would be best to wait for her to come to them lest they risk completely losing the whole family all over again.

During the day, after two weeks with no indication that Charlie's phone call was going to get them anywhere, Quil pretended like it was business as usual. His pack brothers thought he was on the verge of a breakdown, and they weren't wrong, but he had to pretend like he wasn't potentially on the precipice of something that would change his life or he might crumble from it. Embry was tiptoeing around him like he would explode at any minute. His mother called him incessantly to ensure he hadn't allowed himself to float off over the edge of the horizon on one of his morning surf sessions.

At night, just like every other night in his innumerable years of being imprintless that had stretched on endlessly, when he was alone in his bed, alone in the empty house that was the last tangible piece of his grandfather that he had, he allowed Claire—the three-year-old Claire, the only one he knew—to push her way to the forefront of his mind. He tried to imagine her growing older without him. Tried to morph her from the spunky toddler to whom he was tied inexplicably into an adolescent with a Barbie collection and skinned knees. A gangly preteen with braces. A teenager coming into her own, having sleep overs with friends, going to high school and joining extracurricular activities that he wouldn't be able to help guide her through, and her crying alone over the latest guy who broke her heart.

He would've been there for her through all of it, changing himself along with her to be whatever she needed from him. Her older brother, catching her when she fell off her bike or sneaking her ice cream or teaching her to swim. Her best friend, someone to complain about her parents and school to, help her with her homework, teach her to drive, threaten the life of any boys who came around.

" _Sometimes she comes with a man."_

This single sentence played on repeat in his head from the moment Seth had told him that she'd been the one to answer the phone at her parents' house. It nearly broke him, much as he denied that it even mattered.

He never really allowed himself to dwell on the woman she inevitably would become. It had never been important to him.

But lately, lonely even in a life crowded with people that he cared about and who cared for him and with the possibility looming that she maybe, just maybe, might be coming back into his life despite his forlorn surety that she never would, he couldn't stop thinking about Claire the Woman. Someone that would confide in him and him in her. To cook dinner for and fight over the television with and brush his teeth next to in a house they shared. She was abstract, of course, a construct of his wandering mind and pitiful, bleeding heart. But she was still there, no matter how strange it felt or how much it hurt him in those moments where it was just Quil and an empty right side of the bed. He didn't see other women, never had, not that he wanted to. They weren't Claire, weren't his other half that had been ripped away in some cosmically planned comedy of errors.

And then unexpectedly, during a cool night on Second Beach in front of a bonfire erected in celebration of the end of summer, like a specter that floated in on a fall breeze, there she was.

Claire.

* * *

Claire was exceedingly embarrassed that she didn't know anything about her aunt and grandmother besides their names and that they lived in La Push. How the hell was she supposed to find these people with just that to go on? Luckily neither La Push or the neighboring town of Forks she'd have to drive through to get to the reservation were very big places, a little factoid she'd discovered from mercilessly googling everything she could about them during her mind and butt-numbingly long flight. Surprisingly, in an age of information overload, there had been little to nothing available about the reservation. Just some general information like coordinates and population on the tiniest Wikipedia entry she had ever seen. The tribe had a website that listed employment opportunities, information about the Quileute Days festival held in the early summer, and contact information for the council members, but aside from that there was very little for her to go on.

Oh, well. It was too late for any of that to matter, anyway. She had gotten in a rental car at SeaTac around 3am local time, exhausted out of her mind but so nervous about being on the other side of the country and driving straight towards the potential big bad wolf that she had forgotten about the basic necessities of human life like food and sleep and gotten behind the wheel like a woman possessed. One hard rock playlist and two hours later she found herself driving through a town called Port Angeles, decent in size but quiet and still in the early hours of the morning. She stopped long enough to put gas in the sedan and grab a much needed supersized dose of caffeine before going along on her merry way. The GPS told her she was only about an hour from Forks, where she imagined she would get a hotel room if only to maintain a safe distance from the reality of why she had ventured out to the west coast in the first place.

Standing in the early morning light and feeling her skin become slick with the cold dew lingering in the air, Claire noted how much cooler it was here than back home and she did a silent victory dance that she had at least had the forethought to pack warmer clothes.

As she pulled back onto the highway her phone buzzed from its home in the cup holder, a shrill sound chirping through the car's speakers and interrupting the music she was using a crutch to avoid falling asleep. The annoying tone alerted her to a phone call from her best friend. Switching hands on the steering wheel, she hit the 'answer' button and put the receiver up to her right ear. Before she could get a greeting out, she was met with a grunt and an expletive.

"Thanks for the call letting me know you weren't dead somewhere." Her friend's droll tone was colored by the Saturday morning sleepies.

Claire let out a huff and a laugh. "Good morning to you too, Jules."

"I'm not gonna stay on the phone long because I'm barely functional but I just wanted to make sure your plane hadn't crashed or that you'd been kidnapped somewhere between civilization and podunk nowhere."

Claire could imagine Jules laying sideways on her bed, halfway hanging off the side after waking up from the strange position in which she tended to sleep.

"Go back to sleep, even though it's freakin' 9am there so I don't know what you're complaining about."

"Love you too, Claire. Text me later." With that, the line went dead.

Jules had been Claire's best friend since their early teenage years. Jules was the person that she could count on and confide in all the things that she didn't think her parents would be able to hear or accept. She knew all about Claire's little secrets, her dissatisfaction beyond normal teenage angst with her seemingly perfect life. The fifth grade first kiss that Claire swore had ruined her life. The anger she felt at her parents for never talking about the rest of her family. Dancing with Ryan Holcomb at junior prom and the way every nerve in her body rebelled when he tried to take her to bed after some groping in a hotel room that she had thought would do the trick in making her feel like a regular, feeling, sexual human being. Dating faceless man after faceless man in college until she met Derrick. How for the most part, despite being together for four years, there was no spark. He did absolutely nothing for her besides offering her an equal partner to go through life with that she wasn't nauseated at the thought of showing affection to and who may be able to help her satisfy that primal urge for motherhood.

Jules knew, too, about the faceless man she'd been dreaming about for at least as long as she was old enough to remember. The tug in her subconscious every time she misbehaved or did something reckless. The feeling that she was betraying someone else by even looking at guys when she hit puberty.

Jules knew it all, and in exchange for her not running away screaming from Claire's crazy, Claire was the family that Jules, a foster kid since age five, didn't have. Claire hadn't had many friends growing up as a side effect of being more introverted and preferring quality over quantity, and Julia Robinson was the cream of that crop. They had been inseparable after bonding over a shared love of softball, choir, and classic rock.

Passing the push lean sign that welcomed travelers to Forks, Washington, her running thoughts ceased as the need for a bed, any bed, forced itself to the forefront of her list of things that were most extremely and immediately important to think about. Not long after entering the Forks City Limits, Claire pulled in to the Olympic Suites Inn and after killing the engine, she threw her head back against the seat and prayed that she wouldn't end up regretting the rash sequence of decisions she had made in the last twelve hours.

She prayed that she hadn't come too late to meet her maternal grandmother.

She prayed that she would finally find the answers to what she'd been inadvertently searching for her entire life.


	4. Chapter 4

**A/N: Here is an extremely long chapter 4 for you all! As always, feedback and constructive criticism are greatly appreciated. Enjoy!**

 **WARNING- I have upped the rating to M. I have no idea why I thought I could get by with T, partly because of my language and partly because of the plans I have in store for these two. I apologize in advance if this creates any issues!**

* * *

 _The waves on the beach crashed angrily, rolling in underneath black clouds propelled inland by the storm churning just off the coast and adding a sense of foreboding to the dawning day. Sand stung her skin as she tried to peer through the mist and the heavy wind that was pelting her with ocean spray._

 _It was ominous, but this place was familiar. She'd been here before. Felt the pebbled ground under her feet and between her bare toes, traipsed the tide pools with a large, warm hand holding tightly to hers. Rode on the shoulders of a faceless man, more carefree and happy in this dream-like state than she would be in the reality of her life._

 _She could hear his voice, her name rolling reverently off his tongue as the deep richness of his laugh enveloped her. Felt his hands around her ankles and the blood rushing to her head as he swung her upside down in endless circles. She would be dizzy, would barely be able to see straight, but she would beg for more. "Again! Again!" He would comply._

 _It was so cold out, numbing her nose and fingers, but he was warm, always so warm. He kept her warm and safe and happy. His laugh was infectious. He comforted her when she cried. Something about him spoke to something inside of her she couldn't name. These things she knew not by memory, but through some instinct of her subconscious._

 _She knew this man better than herself._

 _And yet he evaded her. She didn't know how she knew him. One minute he was swinging her around by the ankles and the next he was walking away from her._

 _She ran after him, crying, but this time he didn't turn around to offer her any solace. The harder she ran the further away he seemed. She ran so hard she had tunnel vision, blocking out everything in her peripherals and funneling in on his rapidly disappearing figure until she would fall into a void, into nothingness._

"Happy weekend, Olympic Peninsula. This is DJ Jay Davis, and you're listening to K-96.7, your home for smooth, cool alternative."

The low baritone of a local radio deejay pulled a groan from Claire as the sound from the radio cut through the silence of her hotel room, jerking her awake. Bright red digital numbers displayed the time, a respectable 4:48 pm and approximately six and a half hours from the moment Claire had unceremoniously plopped down face-first into the starched, worn comforter of her hotel bed and passed out into sweet, sweet oblivion.

Static and the hum of a slow oldies tune mingled together to funnel her senses into the present. Rolling over with a groan, Claire ran a hand down her drool-covered cheek, feeling the delirium of her dream fading with each second her wakefulness progressed until she could barely remember it at all. Wouldn't remember it if she didn't dream about the same thing at least three times a week every week for as long as she could remember.

Her stomach growled mercilessly at her, turning in on itself as a reminder to Claire that it had been too long since she had eaten. After checking her phone and thankfully finding no missed texts or calls besides a ridiculous meme from Jules, she pushed herself up with a series of crude grunts that immediately accompanied the sound of cracking joints and then rummaged through her toiletry case to find her toothbrush and comb, setting out for the small en-suite bathroom.

"Yikes." Squinting at herself in the dimly lit mirror above the sink, Claire took inventory of her sleep-mussed hair and crusty eyes, and cringed at the four horizontal lines that ran across her forehead and then took a sharp turn south down her right cheek and neck, disappearing below the collar of her hoodie.

After washing her face and brushing her teeth, she felt some semblance of normality creep back into her brain, only to be quashed by the realization of where she was.

A musty hotel room fifteen miles from the past her parents had ripped her away from for reasons she couldn't fathom.

Deciding to take things one step at a time, starting with tampering down the emotion that rose in her throat and the guilt at so expressly and blatantly disrespecting her parents' wishes, she grabbed her phone and a hotel key card from the nightstand and pulled her wallet out of her purse.

She had seen a diner not too far back up the road the way she had come, but it had been packed at breakfast and she imagined it would look similar around dinner time. In no mood to stick out like a sore-thumb stranger amongst a gaggle of small-town folks, her thoughts turned to the gas station in the front lot of the hotel, and, figuring that was as good a place as any to rustle up sustenance, she set off from her first-floor room into the misting rain and through the parking lot towards the half-rusted structure. Side-stepping the lone car that sat sentry at the side of the building that housed the convenience store, Claire thrust the door open, walking in under a tinkling bell that shrilly signaled her arrival.

The elderly clerked looked up at her from where he sat behind the counter doing inventory in the cigarette case, glancing over her just briefly before turning back to his task.

"Evenin' ma'am. Let me know if you need anything."

She nodded towards him even though he was no longer paying her any mind. She stepped down one aisle, plucking a couple sticks of beef jerky out of their cardboard holder and grabbing a bag of barbecue chips from the warped wire shelf next to it as she made her way towards the standing coolers at the back of the store. While pulling out two glass bottle Cokes and a four pack of Moscato, her attention was drawn back to front left corner of the store at the sound of the bell clanking against the door.

A Native American gentleman on the latter side of his middle-ages walked straight for the counter, a smile pulling up one side of his mouth as he exchanged hellos with the man behind the register.

"Afternoon, Kevin. I expect you're here for the ice." The clerk stuck his hand over the counter and the two shared a friendly shake.

Out of the corner of her eye Claire watched as the man leaned against the counter with the ease of familiarity. She hadn't seen many people who looked like her outside of her family, so she discreetly sized him up, genuine curiosity spurring her attention. "How's it going Jim? Yeah, I'll need thirty bags."

"Give me just a sec and I'll pull them from the freezer. Need anything else?"

"No, this is all Emily sent me for. I reckon that'll be it."

Claire's ears perked up and, shocked as she was to hear that name, didn't have the cognizance to look away when the man, Kevin, looked up and immediately met her eyes.

He squinted, trying to place who she was, but she ducked her head and luckily the clerk came back to the front hefting two large bags of ice to start ringing up.

The two seemed to forget about her as they trekked in and out of the store with the bags, leaving her to wonder if the Emily the man was referring to was her aunt as she stared at the reflection of herself in the glass door of the cooler. Surely there could be more than one Emily on the reservation. It was a ridiculously common name after all.

Finally jolting herself out of her trance, Claire made her way up to the front of the store just as they came back in the door from loading the back of the man's pick-up truck. She stayed back while they finished the transaction.

"Last bonfire of the summer? Expectin' a good turn out?"

"Yeah, I guess so. It's serving a dual purpose this year, though. Emily's mom isn't doing so well. Em's thinking it'll probably be the last one for her, unfortunately."

Claire could feel her heart rate blow through the roof.

"Shame. I'm sorry to hear that. Give her my best."

"Will do. Have a good one, Jim. Thanks." With one last look back at Claire and a shake of his head, he left the store.

Claire stepped up, her mind going a mile a minute as she plopped her junk-food dinner on the laminate and fished in her wallet for her credit card.

"Find everything okay, hun?"

"Sure did, thanks for asking." Claire answered him absentmindedly and fidgeted with the drawstring on her hoodie as he scanned each item.

"You ruining your dinner before the bonfire?"

She looked sharply up from the stick of jerky that she had been staring blankly at. "Huh? Oh!" He must've taken a glance at her features and guessed she came from La Push. "No, actually, I'm not from around here."

"Ah, I'm sorry. Shouldn't have assumed." An awkward silence blanketed them as he picked up the wine. "Can I see your I.D. ma'am?" he asked, pointing toward the sign announcing the store policy about not selling alcohol to minors.

"Sure thing." Claire dug around her black hole of a wallet until she located her license. "There we go." She passed it over to him with a smile, deciding to dig for a little information while she had the opportunity. "So, are bonfires a normal thing around here?"

Jim the clerk didn't disappoint. "Down on the res, they are," he answered, swiping her card. As he fiddled with the card reader, he opened his mouth, hesitating for a moment before leaning towards her with a furrowed brow and the glint of gossip in his eye. "Emily Uley is famous for her shindigs over on Second Beach. But, 'lot of mysterious things go on down there, if you ask me. Weird stories and huge men running around barefoot in the winter. They're good people and good business, but I wouldn't set foot down there. Not that anyone who doesn't live there has ever been invited, mind you, except the Chief of Police here in town. It's kinda creepy. Seems fishy to me."

He righted himself and bagged her items, not noticing the skeptical look Claire was leveling him with as the wheels started turning in her head. Emily, La Push, and the Fork's police chief? It couldn't be a coincidence. If it was, it sure as hell wasn't a funny one.

"Anyhow, you're all set. Have a good one!" With that, he turned back to the counter.

Claire left the store and stepped back out into rain that had become heavier over the last ten minutes or so she had been inside. Pulling her hood over her head, she jogged back to her hotel room, kicked her shoes off as she walked in the door, tossed her keys and wallet on the TV stand, and plopped down on the bed. Setting her groceries at her feet, she twisted the top off a Coke as she stared at the wall, cream-painted but yellowing and rippled with age.

 _Emily Uley. Her dying mother. Second Beach. Police chief._

Claire stood back up abruptly. She felt like her whole body was thrumming with…something. She wasn't sure what.

But she was going to go to that bonfire.

No way could she pass up an opportunity like this, not when it had fallen right into her lap. Fate was practically screaming in her ear like a petulant child, kicking and screaming as it pointed towards what it wanted her to do.

Best-case scenario, these people had been actively looking for her and her family so they'd be overjoyed to see her and wouldn't mind the intrusion.

Worst-case scenario this Emily lady wasn't her aunt, would maybe think Claire was crazy for showing up uninvited, and might call the police.

Or the whole group of them knew her but were nutso, her parents had whisked her away from criminals, and she was walking right into the wolves' den, she thought to herself.

"I'm just going to have to take that chance."

She changed from her leggings into a pair of well-worn jeans, pulled her hair out of the knot she'd thrown it into on the top of her head, grabbed the only heavy jacket she owned, and slipped her duck boots on. Her wallet and keys were once again collected, and as an afterthought she grabbed her drink and the bag of chips on her way out the door.

Sending a text to Jules so someone would know to be looking for her just in case she was kidnapped, Claire couldn't get to her car fast enough. She put her Coke in the cup holder then slung what was left in her hand into the passenger's seat, jammed the key into the ignition, and instructed her phone to give her the directions to Second Beach.

As the route loaded, she tapped her fingers on the steering wheel and hoped beyond all hope that the end of the next fifteen minutes wouldn't land her as the central figure in a made-for-TV crime drama.

"Starting route to Second Beach, La Push, Washington. You will reach your destination in 18 minutes."

What should've been an eighteen-minute drive took her thirty. She was nervous as all hell, a state that was buttressed by the fact that she had never driven this slow in her fucking life.

The whole way there, as she drove past quaint homes, a travel center, and a one-story office building, she fought a war with herself, back and forth between the constraint of her childhood dictated by her parents' choices and the grown-up Claire who was desperate to find out where she really belonged.

Too soon she found herself parking behind a small fleet of cars. Choosing a spot at the back so she could make an unfettered escape if necessary, she cut the engine and stepped out of the car, not allowing herself even a second of reprieve to get herself together lest she lose her nerve and back out from her self-appointed mission.

The gravel that crunched beneath her feet and the sound of the ocean carried by the sea breeze soothed her, but when the wind picked up she realized she'd forgotten her coat in the back seat of the rental.

Oh well. No turning around now.

She broke past the trees and stepped on to the beach. What she saw stopped her in her tracks as a sense of déjà vu ripped through her.

 _She knew this place_.

This was the beach that had been front and center in her dreams for as long as she could remember.

Claire looked around at the numerous people gathered there, hoping someone, anyone, would trigger a memory so she could have something to ground her in this uncharted territory.

"Are you lost?" The man she recognized from the gas station not an hour earlier broke her out of her reverie. "Do you need directions?"

Well, he was as good a person to start with as any.

"I'm really sorry to intrude, but my name is Claire Walker and I'm actually looking for my Aunt Emily."

His eyes bulged out of his head as he stared at her, and she noticed in her peripherals a few of the others go stock still and turn their head in her direction.

Claire heard the voice of a woman sob her name and looked beyond the man to see a short, willowy woman with a half-scarred face running at break neck speed towards her. The force of her slamming into Claire knocked her back a step, and she suddenly found herself enveloped in a hug that was surprisingly firm for a woman her size. But nothing had ever felt more like home. _Not even her own mother's hugs had been this grounding, this full of motherly compassion_ , she thought, surprised.

She closed her eyes and bent slightly at the waist to wrap her arms around the woman, nervousness dissipating as she rubbed Claire's back and rocked back and forth with her, intermittently reaching up to stroke a hand through her hair.

"Oh, sweetie, you have NO idea how happy I am to see you!" she cried. "I knew you'd come. I just knew it."

She squeezed her one last time and started to pull away.

Claire opened her eyes, expecting to finally get a good look at the woman she'd been thinking about meeting for weeks.

But she got lost in dark chocolate pools set in the face of the most handsome man she'd ever seen.

A man she recognized as surely as her own reflection. "It's you!" The words came out unbidden.

Something inside her, something she didn't even know was there, snapped into place. For the first time in her life, Claire felt peace.

She felt whole.

* * *

Quil's Saturday started off like any other. He woke up, drank half a cup of black coffee, went for a run, ate three packs of pop-tarts and a pound of bacon, then took a six-minute shower in which he may or may not have gotten himself off. He may be dead inside, emotionally stunted, and imprintless, but he was still a red-blooded male who'd been in his physical, mental, sexual prime for longer than he cared to think about.

He had no obligations at the tribal office today, the younger wolves would patrol since it was the weekend, and the shop was closed so that he and Embry could help Sam set up for Emily's end-of-summer bonfire. Em's mind was mostly on her mother lately, who had cajoled her way into coming down to the beach for at least dinner, but probably longer, because Aiyanna Young did whatever the hell she wanted, her health and everyone else be damned.

Alice checked for Claire every two or three days. She'd called Quil directly on Thursday morning with nothing but the same to report.

He hadn't given up all hope yet, but he was exhausted from constantly being on alert, feeling like he was stuck in the starting blocks of a race in those few tense moments before the gun shot signaled its start. He jumped at every phone call, expecting it to be her; looked longingly at the door to his office at the garage as he imagined a woman without any distinct features aside from her eyes opening it, calling his name with a smile in her voice; berated himself when he sat on Emily's couch one night picturing the ghost of his toddler imprint on the floor in front of the TV looking up at him and asking him if he wanted sugar in his fake tea.

His grandfather's house, now his, was situated half a mile down the road from the Uley property, which backed up against Second Beach. The original pack, their imprints, their kids, and the council members would be attending, and the beach was the only semi-secluded place big enough to accommodate everyone. He opted to walk there, figuring parking would be limited enough without needlessly adding his truck into the mix.

For the next few hours he and Noah Uley cut down logs, dragging them to where Sam and Embry worked side by side next to the rock face that protruded out from the left side of the beach, stacking the dead wood into a tower with a precision that Quil didn't have the patience for.

Emily had enlisted the help of her younger sons, Levi and Gabe, to start bringing the seemingly infinite number of coolers filled with food and drinks down. Jared and Kim showed up with their three in tow, Paul and Rachel not far behind with their brood. Jake rounded out the original six, sauntering onto the beach with his two-year-old Will swinging like a monkey from his neck, Nessie and Charlotte, their oldest, tagging along laughing at the antics of the father-son comedy duo.

Quil couldn't help but smile despite the memories of the past the scene brought back, and the sharp reminder it was of what he was missing.

"Nice to see you out and about in society, Ateara. Thought your seat at the office was gonna have a permanent indent of your ass."

"Nice to know you missed me, Black."

Jake threw a smile at him as he whipped around and threw his son into the air, earning a squeal and a peal of giggles.

Dusk settled around them as more cars began to pull up where the mouth of the road met the beach, not too far from where they'd set up the fire. The younger wolves, not really so young anymore, piled down to the beach with their loved ones in tow, spreading out blankets and pitching in to wrangle toddlers, open hot dog packs, and chaperone the lovesick teenage duo that was Noah Uley and his imprint Jenny Cameron, Jared's sixteen-year old daughter.

"Kim's dad thinks it's hilarious." Jared sidled up to where Quil stood off to the side, nursing a beer and taking in the scene. "He says it's payback for when he walked in on me and Kim back when we were in high school. I think he's still traumatized."

"You and Kim were disgusting." Quil snorted at Embry as he walked up, Tala in tow. "Better make sure you knock on every door from now on or you'll be in the same boat." Jared glared at Embry, but then looked thoughtful for a moment before coming to some kind of decision and stalking off in the direction of his wife, yelling at the top of his lungs and earning a shrill rebuke from his daughter.

"Kimbo! We are taking down every interior door in our house."

Tala pinched Embry's side. "Now look what you've started." The way they looked at each other then was a punch to the gut for Quil, but he swallowed down the bile that had rushed up and studied the two.

Tala had been the last wolf to turn, only the second female ever known to make the change, and when the packs recombined after the Volturi had come all those years ago, she and Embry had taken the first glance at each other and never looked away. The first and only double imprint in their tribe's known history.

They both still phased. They were each other's family now but the pack was home for both of them. And while Quil couldn't ever bring himself to think of it out of guilt, he knew Embry wanted to be there for him. They had been best friends for so long that it had been unthinkable in Embry's mind to leave him behind. Jake wasn't aging either so for the time being they could all continue the charade of longevity.

Tala would follow Embry to the ends of the earth, and she understood. Plus, they all knew she'd never felt freer than she did after the phase. She wasn't ready to give it up.

"Any word from Alice?" Tala looked up at Quil, her hand grasping at his crooked elbow.

Quil looked across the sand at Jake, who was watching them with the shrewd eye he had perfected over his two-decade tenure as alpha. Jake took a deep breath and sighed before shaking his head.

"Nope. Nothing." He reinforced his emotional barriers with a steel shudder, and Tala squeezed his arm.

"She feels it too, Quil. Now that she knows something is up, now that she has a place to channel it, she'll come. I know it. She has to."

"You know, people keep saying that. And as soon as I start to believe it something else fucks with the situation and then poof, nothing." He took a step back, out of her grasp, but she followed him, pulling him into a hug as Embry watched with a pained expression, feeling Tala's empathy alongside his own.

Quil wrapped an arm loosely around the girl who'd been like his little sister, who'd brought him into her home for dinner more times than he could count, done his laundry when he slipped into his annual week-long funk around Claire's birthday, and mercilessly gave him grief about how he should be keeping the faith.

Without his friends, he wouldn't have survived the last twenty-odd years.

With his arm still around Tala, Quil turned and headed for the others, Embry falling into stride alongside them. Some had gathered around the fire with sticks roasting hotdogs, others were crowded by the coolers sipping beer or soda, and a couple of the wolves that were still phasing were starting up a game of tackle football. The elders sat sentry next to the warm fire, Aiyanna Young nestled in the middle of them.

They all interacted with the easy familiarity that only going to hell and back together countless times could cultivate.

Quil heard a car pull up and an engine cut off towards the back of the other cars away from the beach. Everyone that should be was already there, but he didn't spare it a second thought as he punched Embry on the shoulder and nodded his head towards where the game was starting, wanting to get in on the action.

He barely registered Kevin Littlesea, Collin's dad, ask someone if they were lost or needed directions.

"I'm really sorry to intrude, but my name is Claire Walker and I'm actually looking for my Aunt Emily."

He made it three steps before realization hit.

Three steps before a combination of the sweetest damn thing he had ever smelled and a voice the sound of dark velvet and oozing honey gripped his heart, his soul like a vice. His knees buckled underneath him from the sensory overload and he heard Jake shout his name over Emily's excited cry.

He couldn't breathe. He felt like he was floating adrift in hazy primordial ooze. Every single thing faded away from him as he whipped around, still on his knees, and focused myopically on the woman being crushed in Emily's embrace.

His soul wrenched.

His imprint.

His Claire.

Claire, Claire, Claire, Claire, Claire.

Her eyes were shut. He needed to see her eyes.

He desperately sucked in shallow pulls of air from where he kneeled frozen in the sand, panting, staring at her, categorically memorizing whatever he could see with inhuman speed and perception.

No make-up.

Dark silky hair that stopped below her shoulder.

Pretty white teeth under a cautious smile.

A cute upturned nose.

Taller than Emily by half a head.

Soft curves. _Holy fuck, those curves…_

She still bit her nails.

Short, smooth fingers. A scar on her right ring finger.

And sweet holy hell, no ring in sight on her left hand.

He needed to see her eyes.

Like the heavens chose this overcast day in late September to smile down on him, her eyes opened and locked immediately on his.

And he fell. All over again.

He didn't notice her step out of Emily's arms and move toward him. Didn't hear her say "It's you!" as confusion bloomed on her face. Didn't feel Embry and Jake place their hands on his trembling shoulders as everyone on that beach went deathly silent, staring at the scene unfolding in front of them with varying degrees of concern and elation. Couldn't focus on anything except for those eyes as they crept closer and closer until he was looking right straight up into them from a foot away.

"Claire." He breathed out her name like a reverent prayer, like it was the last word he'd ever say.

He registered her hand coming up to cup his face. Felt her shaking as she brushed her thumb back and forth across his cheek.

He pitched forward into her with a sigh, his arms coming around her waist as he buried his nose in the valley between her full breasts, taking deep draws of her musky almond scent and feeling like he could actually breath for the first time since she'd gone away.

He could feel the smooth rise and fall of her chest under his face. The warmth her body radiated. Her arms wrapping around his shoulders and pulling him deeper into her.

A wet drop on the top of his head, followed by another, and another, broke him out of his trance. She was crying.

He stood, his arms never leaving her body. Lifted her with him, her feet coming off the ground. Her soft, pliant body flush against his and his nose grazing up her chest then along the column of her throat until he finally rooted it into the crook of her neck where, if it was possible, she smelled even more heavenly. She clung to him, lips against his ear whispering, "It's you," over and over.

She knew him. He didn't understand how, didn't understand why, but he didn't care.

He would've happily spent the rest of his life right there on the beach with this woman, his Claire, finally in his arms.


	5. Chapter 5

**A/N: Here is the fifth installment. I hope you all enjoy reading it as much as I enjoyed writing it! As always, your feedback and constructive criticism is more than welcome.**

* * *

How long they stood there, he wasn't sure. If she hadn't moved first, he probably never would have. She smelled so good, felt so real in his arms, her soft body pressed tightly against his.

She pulled herself away from him, slowly dragging her cheek and nose along his face until her head was tilted back and she was looking at him. He fell into her eyes, _those beautiful eyes_ again, and a feeling of joy so potent wafted up into his throat from his chest that he nearly sobbed from relief that she was here and terror that he may have finally gone off the deep end.

But then something behind him caught her eye and she blushed furiously, her eyes widening almost imperceptibly as she pushed against him, wordlessly asking to be put down.

How he found the strength to do it, he'd never know. Jake behind him, pulling him backwards, probably factored heavily.

"Umm…." She tilted her head sideways in embarrassment and crossed her arms, a movement that he couldn't help but notice pushed her chest up enticingly under her sweatshirt. She was certainly not the child she had left as, the girl he hadn't gotten the chance to really know.

His hands itched to touch her again. "Hi?" She half-breathed, half-laughed the word out. _God, she was beautiful_.

He stood there looking down at her like a total idiot, everything he'd planned and promised over the years to say to her if he ever had her in arms reach again floating straight out of his head.

"Hey," he finally managed, his voice cracking over his wildly upturned lips like he was some prepubescent teenager instead of a thirty-eight-year old man. _Smooth, Ateara._

An arm reached around him when he couldn't form any coherent words, a hand extending towards Claire as he felt his Alpha wrap his other arm over his shoulders. "Jake Black. Great to see you again, Claire."

She shook his hand as her eyes moved back and forth between this new acquaintance and the man she felt she had practically just molested in front of a crowd of strangers.

"Nice to meet you…again, I guess." She smiled that toothy smile again and Quil thought he would melt into a puddle of nothing but goop and mush at her feet.

Quil felt another body come around him, Embry stepping up to his side with an amused but guarded glance in his direction. "Hi Claire. I'm Embry. Embry Call. And this mute here is my friend Quil."

"Quil." She tested the word, drawing it out in a whisper as she let it roll off her tongue and over her lips, feeling the vibration like she was trying to bring back some kind of touch memory.

The sound of his name coming out of her mouth drew him towards her like she'd pulled at some invisible cord wrapped around his heart. But as he stepped forward towards her, she took a step back and seemed to draw back into herself, confusion in her eyes as she stared skeptically at him.

"I'm sorry," he mumbled, placing his hand up in front of him in a jerking motion like he'd been electrocuted. As Claire opened her mouth to reply, Emily came up beside her, looking apologetically at him as she turned Claire back towards the bonfire, spurring everyone else to gather around the little group that had formed half way between the tree line and the surf.

Sue was the first in line, a warm smile blooming across her aging face as she wrapped Claire in her embrace. Sam came next. Then her younger cousins, and Seth and Leah. She moved from body to body, hand to hand as Emily reintroduced her to people she could not possibly remember and whose names she would likely forget almost immediately after she heard them.

 _She somehow remembered you_. The wolf within him carried this information through every atom in his body, preening and giddy at the thought. And though he was curious just how, that would be a conversation for later.

He watched, unable and unwilling to look away as she went from person to person with an unpracticed friendliness that made her seem gracious and sincere, and as he followed her every move from the spot between his best friends where he still stood frozen, meeting her eyes every time they frequently wandered back in his direction, Quil noticed little quirks about her personality and her mannerisms that had carried over from when she was small.

That tilt of her head and slight furrow of her brow when she was trying to pay attention to something being said to her.

The way she fidgeted with the sleeves of her sweatshirt.

Her right hip cocked to the side as she stuck her left leg out slightly beside of her.

The squint to her eyes and the way she pulled the left side of her bottom lip in between her teeth before she laughed.

But she was so different, too. Her two front teeth had obviously grown back, for one thing. He snuffed a laugh through his nose at the thought.

There were so many things that he wanted to ask her about; things he wanted to know about her past, her life, her plans for the future. He wanted to know if her favorite color was still blue. If she still liked to dance around the kitchen eating cookies. If she still hated candy corn.

The tangible pull that had diminished all those years ago when he had given up all hope of their reunion was back with a fervor that he'd never experienced, and it was almost as if he'd gone through the process of imprinting all over again. She wasn't the girl he'd first met, was basically a completely different person than she'd been when she'd left, but she was still his Claire. She was still the person who had settled like a permanent ache in his chest that had now blossomed throughout his whole being, centered around an invisible cord that bound him to her. Demanded he pay attention to her every move. Every emotion. Every reaction.

She was now just a very grown up version of that person.

Back then, when he had first imprinted, he'd only noticed the youthful sparkle in her eyes, the smudge of dirt on a round cheek, windblown hair, and a carefree smile. He'd wanted to protect her. To shield her from any of the troubles the world could bring down on her.

Now. _Oh, now_.

He wanted to curl up at her feet. He wanted to bury his nose in her neck and in that delicious scent of arousal that his wolf had picked up when he had been buried in her chest. To taste her.

That thought broke him out of his hazy reverie as her reintroduction into the life of his pack was winding down. He wasn't used to those kinds of lascivious thoughts, but _holy shit, look at her,_ his wolf demanded. He bit back his lupine instincts, refusing to let himself get sucked away from the present, the present that included his imprint being within arm's reach.

It became quite obvious to him that she felt out of place. He could _feel_ it, somewhere inside of him, that she felt bereft. Unsure of herself.

Somewhere in the background the football game started up after a few awkward moments of a lull in activity. Jacob gave him a brusque pat on the back and a wary smirk before rejoining his wife near the cliff face where she sat with their children.

Embry gave him a push forward towards where Emily had maneuvered Claire by the fire, at the feet of Aiyanna. The old woman looked happier than Quil could ever remember seeing her. They spoke in hushed tones, Claire planted in the sand on her knees, bent over her grandmother's lap, their hands clasped together. Emily sat sentry beside them, tears in her eyes which were volleying between the pair of women to her left and Quil.

A combination of Embry's nudge and the tug on his diaphragm that had seemed to become a permanent fixture over the last ten minutes propelled him towards her. As he made his way closer to the small group that had formed around his imprint, he finally noticed the cautious looks and seemingly congratulatory nods his pack conferred on him. Aside from those there who were immediate members of Claire's family, the rest had instinctually given the group a decently wide berth.

As he approached, he heard Sam ask Claire if she was hungry and offer her a stick to roast a hotdog.

"Oh, no! I didn't come here for a meal." Her dulcet voice washed over Quil as she turned toward where Sam stood behind her, positioning herself like she was about to stand. "I definitely don't want to intrude, so I'll probably leave soon and—"

"No!" Both Quil and Emily had simultaneously halted her attempt at polite refusal, his reaction more forceful as he stepped into their familial circle, terror washing over him that she might leave him when he'd just gotten her back.

Claire looked up at him with alarm and once again he froze, captivated by her dark eyes and the firelight that was mirrored within them as he stared down at her.

 _Claire, Claire, Claire, Claire_ , ran through his mind once again, his blood pressure skyrocketing.

Emily looked at him with an amused expression, but again came to his rescue. "Nonsense, Claire. You're not intruding, you're family! This is definitely a most welcome surprise, I promise you. We would love it if you stayed."

She looked back and forth between her aunt and Quil before her grandmother finally settled the issue. "You're staying, child. I've waited a long time to see you again and we have a lot to catch up on, so get you something to eat and prepare yourself to talk my ears off." She patted Claire's hand and looked up at Quil with a wink.

Looking resigned but not particularly unhappy about being strong-armed, Claire sighed at took the stick from Sam's hand with a nod. She moved to stand and Quil nearly tripped over his own feet in order to help her up.

His hot hand wrapping gently around her elbow startled her, but while she jumped slightly at his touch, she didn't pull away. Quil's smile nearly split his face in two. _She felt so damn soft under his touch._

He heard Sam snort at his eagerness and the sharp _thwack_ of Emily slapping his arm in rebuke.

"Thanks," she muttered up at him, and as they stared at each other, neither moving, Quil barely managed to breath.

And then her stomach groaned loudly, drawing his attention down towards what was in his wolf's opinion her too-clad torso. With a shrug, Claire laughed. "I guess I should know better than to go off adventuring on an empty stomach, right?"

He stared at her mouth again.

She smiled hesitantly at his attention.

He felt like he was going to pass out.

 _Get your shit together, dude_ , he screamed at himself. _Say something, literally anything_.

"Quil, why don't you show her where the food is?" Aiyanna huffed at him as she kicked him in his shin.

"O-okay."

Claire raised her eyebrows at him amusedly as he tilted his head towards the food tables, trudging out a half step in front of him. He got lost in the sway of her hips, the confident stride of her legs, the way her ass looked in her jeans.

He snapped his eyes back up to the side of her head and he fell into step beside her, determined not to notice anything else of that…manner…about her for the rest of the night.

She turned her head to look up at him through those thick, dark lashes, and his gaze traveled from hers down to her nose, across those plump lips, followed the curve of her chin down the column of her neck where her tanned flesh disappeared beneath dark gray cotton. It was when he realized where his eyes were wandering that he jerked them back up to hers again.

He was so screwed.

* * *

Claire had abso-fucking-lutely no idea what the hell had come over her. Everything had been a complete blur from the moment she felt her feet urging her towards a man who her brain insisted it didn't know, who her heart demanded it did. Seeing him, that face, those eyes, his smile had awoken something in her she'd thought didn't exist.

It scared her shitless. At least, it did after she'd disentangled herself from his warm, strong, hard… _my God, his body was like a brick wall_ …embrace.

Her instincts had lit her body on fire under the heavy gaze of this man, and she hadn't even known his name, for heaven's sake!

Quil. As soon as she'd been told his name, it roused something inside of her. Memories from her childhood that she shouldn't be able to recall floated to the front of her mind.

Picking up colored stones on this very beach. Him sloughing around in tidal pools after her, pretending to be angry when she splashed him only to scoop her up and blow raspberries on her tummy. Him in a tiara and pink tutu while she wore a tie, the pair of them seated at a small plastic picnic table with a porcelain tea set laid out in front of them.

But that was impossible. The man she remembered, the faceless man she dreamed about that had within seconds of seeing him in person had finally coalesced into a vivid picture in her mind's eye, looked exactly like Quil. Hadn't changed, hadn't aged.

Hell, he couldn't be any older than thirty now, and even that might be pushing it.

She pushed these thoughts to the back of her mind, willing herself not to dwell on her wild imagination as her aunt introduced her to her family.

This was what she was here for. She did her best to commit every name with every face, and she was ecstatic that somehow, less than a day into her journey, she'd managed to find not only her aunt and grandmother, but apparently a whole beach full of family and close friends. Everyone was so welcoming, so friendly, that somewhere in her subconscious the niggling thought of why her parents left this place grew even more shrouded in mystery.

As she made her way through the mass of people that had flocked around her, she found herself wondering what on earth they were putting in the water up here. Many of the men, and even her cousin Leah, were ridiculously warm and so far up on the scale of height and attractiveness that it was insane.

Quil had been the same way. She couldn't help herself from occasionally looking back at the person whose touch her body was screaming for. He remained between his two friends, staring after her with an unfathomable expression on his face.

Technically a stranger, it was he who had seemed to nearly cry as she ran to him, who had hugged her more fiercely than she had ever been hugged before, even by Derrick, who had snuffed his way up her neck, his warm breath behind her ear so reverently, so sensually. There was no way she had imagined that, right?

This pull she felt, this connection, was so intense that she didn't know what to make of it. They'd spoken no more than three words to each other, not to mention he hadn't seen her since she was a young child. Where the hell had their reactions stemmed from?

Maybe they were both crazy.

As Emily slowly tugged her to her grandmother, she took one last look back at him, a ghost of a smile on his face as he looked at her like he was far away somewhere.

"My goodness, this is not my little Claire, is it?" A tired voice that carried shades of the spunk it had once had floated through the daze Claire had been in. Whipping her head around, she felt Emily squeeze her arm and nudge her forward. In the yawning daylight, Claire could make out the thin, ageing face of her grandmother resting under a chinle-patterned head scarf.

"Believe it or not, it's me." Claire slowly dropped to her knees in front of her grandmother, finding herself eye level with the woman. A shaking hand reached up to rest on Claire's cheek, and Claire covered it with her own as their other hands met and clasped together on Aiyanna's lap.

Her grandmother's stare unnerved her as it seemed to take an inventory of her face. "You really have grown up, Claire-bear. I can hardly believe you're a woman now. Seems like just yesterday you were walking under my feet asking for s'mores."

Claire laughed at that. "Well that's one thing that hasn't changed. I still love s'mores." She relaxed a little at this minute but significant (to her) link between the old Claire these people knew and the Claire she was now.

Her stomach growled lowly at the thought of food, her only meal that day being half the bag of chips that still sat in the rental car, and as her grandmother laughed, she saw her uncle approach her out of the corner of her eye.

They offered her dinner, but in her mind, she couldn't possibly stay. The past ten minutes rushed back at her and, to her embarrassment, she realized she had all but barged in on their gathering unannounced and had then proceeded to jump one of her aunt and uncle's friends in mortifying fashion. When she tried to make her excuses and, ultimately, her escape, _he_ was suddenly there, loudly contradicting her attempt to leave with more anxiety laced in that one syllable than her heart could stand.

Quil's hot hand on her elbow was almost her undoing, until her stomach growled again, louder, more insistent this time. She barely registered the words that came out of her own mouth, barely registered her grandmother's voice encouraging him to show her the food table.

He ended up trailing along beside her, neither one of them having any idea what to say. How do you coherently speak to someone you don't know anything about aside from the fact that you are irrevocably and unexplainably attracted to them?

Quil shadowed her, watching her as she put condiments on two buns, put a handful of chips on her plate, grabbed a random long neck bottle of beer out of a cooler he led her to, and made her way back towards the bonfire with two uncooked hot dogs. He heavily plopped down beside her as she crossed her legs and leaned back against a log, spearing the meat with the stick Sam had designated to her. She sniffed out a laugh at the activity, not having roasted a weenie since she was in middle school. As she leaned the stick into the fire, she turned her attention to the beer she had grabbed, futilely attempting to twist the top. Quil slowly reached over and took it from her hand like it was the most delicate thing he'd ever touched.

As he popped the top off with his thumb, refusing to meet her eyes, she realized he was just as nervous as her. Why, she didn't know, because he was easily, no contest, hands-down the most attractive human being she had ever seen. At least 6'4" with a chiseled jaw, cropped dark hair, a long Grecian nose, and a tantalizing set of bowed lips, he was surely a sight to behold. Though she had long ago learned the self-confidence that she usually carried, she felt like a dweeb just sitting next to him, with her sloppy sweatshirt and windswept hair she'd haphazardly thrown into a ponytail against the breeze coming off of the ocean waves.

 _What are you, a friggin' teenager? Get it together, Claire._

If she had been a dweeb, it was surely lost on him, she thought. He was back to looking at her like she might disappear at any moment.

She took a long swill of the beverage he'd handed back to her, attempting to will away the burn that the brush of his knuckles had radiated up her arm. She smacked her lips and turned back to the fire just in time for her grandmother to start what could only be described as an interrogation of her.

Starting with her love life.

"So Claire-bear, any special man-friends in your life?" The elderly woman's eyes twinkled and Claire watched out of the corner of her eye as Quil sat up ramrod straight, eyes boring into the side of her head.

"Uhh…" she trailed off, unsure of how appropriate it was to discuss her scumbag of an ex-fiancé with people she'd just met…or re-met.

"Mom, let the poor girl eat her dinner." Emily stepped in half-heartedly from where she sat on the log above Claire's position on the ground, but Claire looked around and realized everyone in the near vicinity was watching her with a horrible attempt at concealing their interest.

 _Weird_.

"No, Emily, it's fine. I don't mind. She did forewarn me." Claire smiled warmly at her grandmother, pulling her hotdogs from the flames as she steeled herself for the inquisition that was sure to last awhile. She'd been gone a long time, after all, and these people obviously cared about her, wanted to know about her life. She would oblige.

"I was engaged until a few weeks ago." She held up her left hand, wiggling her fingers. "That obviously didn't work out."

"Why not?" Quil choked out from behind her, looking at her like he might throw up or scream or both.

She popped a chip in her mouth, chewing thoughtfully as she peered into the bonfire, trying to decide how much she should say. A dry swallow cleared her throat and she determined it was best not to hedge the truth. "He cheated on me."

Everyone around her looked at her with varying degrees of completely unnecessary pity.

She hazarded a look at Quil, concerned only with his reaction for some reason unknown to her. He looked angry, his hand digging into the log they were leaning against and creating indents in the wood. He seemed to realize that she could see what she was doing, registered the look of shock in her eyes, and ripped his hand away only to shove it through his hair in frustration, his toe tapping a hurried rhythm against the ground.

"Oh honey," Emily's hand had come to rest on her shoulder. "I'm so sorry. That must've been devastating."

Claire shrugged again, turning her attention back to her plate with a wide-mouth bite of hotdog before continuing.

"Surprisingly, it wasn't. I think the worst part was that it didn't bother me _nearly_ as much as it should have considering I would be marrying him next month. Definitely dodged a bullet, I'd say."

She took another swig of beer.

"At any rate, I'm happier than I've been in a long time and I'm really glad to be here. It feels right." She smiled at her aunt, her uncle, and her grandmother.

"You know, I'm sure someone here could beat him up for you, just the same."

Claire let out a deep-belly laugh at her grandma's bland statement. "It would be a wasted effort. I assure you, I could not care less about him. Besides, I flushed his expensive ring down the toilet. I think that hurt him more than anything else."

And with that, the conversation switched to other things.

Her grandma's questions came like rapid fire and Claire went through anything and everything about herself. She was a nurse at one of Atlanta's level one trauma centers. She used to play softball but couldn't give one hoot about exercise now since she was on her feet all day long. She loved music and she sang, something that excited Emily, who apparently dabbled in being a novice singer-songwriter and performed most of the ceremonial music at all of the tribal events. She didn't really call anywhere home because she'd moved around a lot. This caused some murmurs but her grandmother ignored them and persisted with her questioning.

Claire was currently in the process of finding a one-bedroom apartment to call her own. She had one friend who she wouldn't've survived without. Her favorite color was still blue. She couldn't draw to save her life. She wasn't crafty or skilled in the culinary arts but she could bake a mean cupcake. She loved to take long drives by herself whenever she had free time, and she owned her dream car, a Dodge Challenger. She liked to swim and she loved to be out on the ocean.

"I have a boat." Claire swiveled her head to the man beside her. Quil had been listening to her with rapt attention but never contributed to the conversation, and had gone so quiet that Claire had almost-not-really forgotten he was there. He tilted his head toward her shyly. "I mean, it's a decent sized bay boat, but I could take you out sometime if…you know what, nevermind, you probably won't even be here long enough to…"

Claire cut him off, putting her hand on his wrist and turning toward him. "I'd like that a lot! It's been so long since I've been out. I mean, I took two weeks off of work so if you're free any time between now and then…" Now it was her turn to trail off like a nervous schoolgirl.

He looked up at her again in that smoldering way of his that was like a punch to the gut. She'd never believed in love at first sight, but dear lord, maybe this was what all those songs and movies and poems were talking about. She was consumed by those eyes.

A throat cleared somewhere around them and he pulled away from where he had leaned in towards her, effectively dousing whatever had been crackling between them.

She turned back to her grandmother with a look of what she was sure was poorly concealed disappointment and confusion.

"Claire, did you come by yourself?"

And there it was. Something Claire hadn't given much thought to but now that the question had been asked, she was sure it had been the pink elephant on the minds of her family.

"Yeah. I did. Actually, no one knows I'm here. Well, besides my friend Jules."

Emily shook her head and Sam's arm came around her. Aiyanna looked just as dejected.

Claire misinterpreted their reaction. "I'm sorry. I thought it would be okay if I came alone…"

A hand wrapped around hers and squeezed. "It is definitely okay, Claire." His dark, husky tone enveloped her senses.

It was only the second time he had said her name, and the way it crossed over his lips sent a shiver down her spine. She set her plate down and pulled her knees up toward her body. Quil moved their joined hands to her knee and she stared at them, tried to burn the memory and the feeling into her brain.

Emily leaned over to wrap an arm around her shoulders. "Of course it's okay that you came alone, Claire!" She rubbed her hand back and forth across Claire's back. "I was hoping that my sister, and yours, would come, but I'm so glad to have you here. We all are."

She wasn't sure but she thought she heard Quil mutter " _you have no idea_ " after turning his head out towards sea.

It wasn't a topic that any of them seemed particularly keen to delve into any further, and Claire was content to move on. Hearing funny stories about her newfound relatives, watching the hilarious interactions of Emily's children and their friends, and the ease with which she was incorporated into their fold gave her the sense of peace she had come here looking for.

Thousands of miles away from where she had begun her weekend, she had found her family. She had found home.

The gentle, warm hand that always seemed to find its way to her shoulder, her back, her knee, her fingers for the rest of the night was certainly an added bonus, and she was sure the next two weeks would prove to be some of the most interesting ones of her entire life.


	6. Chapter 6

**A/N: This fic is becoming an exercise for me in crafting detailed scenes and emotional responses. If there is a particular excerpt of this chapter that you felt sucked into, or on the flip side a scene that needed more punch, I would love to know! As always, your feedback and constructive criticism are greatly appreciated. Hope y'all enjoy this chapter!**

 **Disclaimer: I am not Stephanie Meyer. I do not own Twilight or any of it's affiliates. The quote in the body of this chapter is from Mark Twain.**

* * *

How in God's name some asshole had managed to sleep around on this…this _goddess_ was far beyond Quil's comprehension.

He wanted to hunt the imbecile down and hug him out of gratitude and then rip him to shreds for causing Claire even a modicum of heartache.

Quil spent the best night of his whole life entranced by Claire. Had somehow manage to stutter enough coherent words to secure himself an afternoon on his dad's old fishing boat with her.

He couldn't believe his good fortune. The incalculable amount of time over the past few years he'd spent heartsick over whether she'd been scooped up by some lucky son of a bitch faded away little by little into a distant memory. Every brush of his knuckles over her back, every touch of his hand to hers, every smile she threw his way, and every word she graced his ears with seared themselves into his soul, repairing years' worth of damage and loss in hours, minutes, seconds.

He forced himself to be satisfied with that miniscule contact and besides, not even a few hours ago, this was more than he thought he'd ever get. She could feel their bond but certainly didn't know what it was or why it was, and he'd be damned if he came on too strong, too soon.

Even though every cell in his body demanded that he pick her up and take her off someplace where they wouldn't be bothered and where his wolf—and, if he was being honest, he himself—could wrap itself around her and learn all the ways to make his mate sated and happy and safe.

Being a wolf was some weird fucking shit, man. He'd been dealing with it for over half his life, had been in the heads of other wolves for the same amount of time, and just when he thought he understood, had come to terms with it, shit went and got weirder.

Quil thought that it might be strange to see a grown-up Claire after having imprinted on her as a toddler. Thought it might feel disorienting or queasy or, really, maybe just plain wrong.

But whatever had happened a few hours ago to him—after he'd seen her and held her and felt her, after that pull to her had reestablished itself so differently, more resolutely within him than before—had felt natural. It felt like home.

He had eaten up every detail she relinquished about herself, storing them away for later for when his brain could absorb it, could pick them apart and analyze every word. Had taken notes for what he might do to make her stay here more comfortable and, truthfully, what he might use to win her over. Now that she was here, with him, he had every intention of keeping things that way. Her here with him or him somewhere, anywhere with her. He wouldn't give a second's thought to following her wherever her life led her.

He had trailed behind her like an attention-starved puppy as she walked with her grandmother, Emily, and Sam back up to where the cars were parked after the food had been cleaned up and Aiyanna had started to look even more exhausted from her long day out. Had stayed in the background as she hugged them and waved goodbye to them after exchanging phone numbers, her telling them where she was staying and promising to come by Emily's house the next day for Sunday brunch. Had felt a rush of excitement when she came back toward him with a smile instead of going to her own car, asking him if the real fun began when the older folks and the kiddos had gone home. Told him she thought she had a couple hours left in her if they didn't mind her company.

He held a hand out to her then, and she took it with a pleased smirk on her face.

"Were we friends as kids?" Claire was timid as she asked him, but swung their hands in between them and looked up at him as they made their way from the tree-lined road back down to the beach.

"Something like that," he hedged. "Why do you ask?"

"I just…I feel like I know you. _Really_ know you. I can't explain it. We couldn't have been very old when I left. I just don't understand it, I guess." She left out the tidbit of only having memories of him being an adult, convinced that she had substituted this tangible version of Quil for his younger counterpart.

It was in that moment, her moment of bravery and honesty, that he wanted to tell her everything. Absolutely just spill his guts to her. Why she felt the way she did. Why her parents had taken her away. Tell her that she had a devoted servant now for the rest of her life if she would just accept him, _stay with him._

But she wasn't ready for that and neither was he, so he settled for a vague version of the truth.

"Do you think that sometimes you can meet someone and you just click right off the bat?" Quil asked, shrugging and squeezing her hand. She mulled it over for a moment and then nodded up at him. "Maybe this is one of those things."

"Maybe," Claire hummed, squeezing his hand back.

They resumed their spot leaning against a log next to the fire and facing the ocean, their hands still clasped. All the wolves with families and the tribal elders had gone home, leaving only a smattering of younger couples and unimprinted wolves who milled about around the beach or were horsing around in the surf.

Embry and Tala had made their way over to the fire and taken up residence on the log next to Quil and Claire.

As soon as Tala went to open her mouth, Quil cringed, terrified of what all would come out. He loved her, but she was feisty.

"So, you guys look cozy." _Afraid for good reason,_ Quil thought sardonically as Tala wiggled her eyebrows at their joined hands. Embry snorted.

Quil tightened his grip on Claire, anticipating that she would pull away from him, but she surprised him as she rubbed her thumb over the side of his finger reassuringly.

"What is it you said, Quil? 'One of those things?'" She bumped her thigh against his and Quil looked between her and Tala with a shit-eating grin on his face.

"Good thing you're both single, huh Quil?" Tala shot back, refusing to be one upped. He glared at her, worried she'd crossed a line mentioning Claire's love life, but Claire was undaunted.

"I like you better and better, Tala." Claire was still laughing and shaking her head as she responded. Quil didn't want to let himself think about what her answer might mean.

"And I like _you_ better and better, Claire. Now, tell me more about this dick bag who cheated on you."

Quil stiffened but Claire let out a booming laugh at Tala's brazenness. "Good news sure does travel fast around here, huh?"

"You don't have to answer her, Claire," Quil moaned.

"Oh, no, but she really should. Granny got the PG version but I think we're gonna be friends and, as her friend, I want all the deets. Specifically, was he so good in the sack that he could catch someone else, or is he just loaded?" Tala leaned in conspiratorially towards Claire.

Embry blew beer out his nose. Quil wanted to die, or would've wanted to, if his hand hadn't otherwise been engaged in the most important business of its life—encasing Claire's.

Claire snorted, but answered, nonplussed. "No comment to the sack thing."

Tala cringed. "That bad, huh?"

He watched with morbid curiosity as Claire raised an eyebrow and scrunched up her nose.

Quil _really_ wanted to die. Or at least have bleach poured into his brain. The thought of another man's inadequate hands on his imprint made him nauseous. Might have made him furplode if it hadn't been for Claire's hand anchoring him to this ridiculous conversation.

 _We'll show our imprint what she's been missing,_ his wolf all but growled from deep within his being. Quil put it on lockdown, determined to be rational. Sort of.

"Well, what can a girl say about Derrick Jenkins?" Claire started ticking off the guy's notable traits on her unoccupied fingers. Quil stowed away his name for future reconnaissance purposes. "Acceptably attractive, great job, prominent family. Spent more time on his hair than I did. Spent more money on his clothes than I did. Don't get me wrong, he's a nice guy. Or he was in the beginning, I guess. I met him my first year of working full time at the hospital when he stepped into an elevator I was on. He was leaving some kind of fundraising event and I was coming off of a twelve-hour shift in the NICU. The next three and a half years were history. Dated, moved in together, got engaged. His mom basically planned our whole wedding because I guess she thought my taste was too simple to do their country club justice."

"Fuck that lady." Embry threw in his two cents.

Quil took this all in greater stride than he would have as a younger man, but in some masochistic way he was still desperate to know how close he had been to his worst fears coming true. He quietly asked, "Do you think if you hadn't found out he was cheating that you would've made it down the aisle?"

Tala didn't have a smart comment to add and Embry sat looking warily at him, knowing immediately where his friend's mind had gone.

Claire looked thoughtfully up into the dark, cloudless sky before staring at her knees as she answered. "I honestly don't know. I don't think I ever really loved him. I'd like to think that I would've realized what a mistake I was making, but who knows." She looked up at him, her eyes searching for something in his, before she continued in a thoughtful, hushed tone, her mind seeming far away. "I've been missing something, some piece of me, my whole life. Derrick didn't fill it. I hope I wouldn't have been stupid enough to settle for that."

Quil's heart ballooned, if it was even possible. He wanted to open his mouth and proclaim that _he_ was her missing piece, she was certainly his, and to profess his undying love and affection for her, but luckily Tala beat him to the punch before he could scare her away.

"Well, no use stewing over things that will never happen." She gave Quil a piercing look, hoping to hit her message home with him before turning her attention back to Claire. But before Tala could continue the expedition through Claire's past, Claire interjected.

"Enough about me. I've done enough talking about myself to last a thousand years. What is it you guys do for a living? Are you from here, too?" Claire diverted the conversation to the couple, ending the brief anxiety-laced daze Quil found himself in.

He closed his eyes as Tala piped up, in her element and content to carry the conversation.

 _She is here. She is healthy. She isn't dating or engaged or married to someone. She is sitting right next to you. Fate brought her back to you. For God's sake, don't blow it._ He chanted this over and over in his mind until his heart unclenched and his senses came back to him.

As Tala explained how they'd been married for five years, Embry's job as the parts man for the garage he, Quil, and Jake had joint stake in, and her gig teaching students at the tribal school social studies and culture, Quil opened his eyes, _really_ opened his eyes, and looked at Claire's profile as she listened intently.

For the first time in a very, very long time, as he took in the glow of her skin, the mircoexpressions that twitched across her face, and the relaxed peace that he could feel radiating around her, he allowed himself to hope, _really bones-deep hope_ , that he would get his happily-ever-after with his imprint. His Claire.

* * *

It had been the best night of Claire's life, bar none, no question about it. As she lay in the stiff sheets of her hotel bed that night, wired and finding it impossible to sleep, she remembered her time around the fire with him, _Quil,_ and how _right_ it had felt. To hold his hand. To laugh with him and his friends. To simply _be_ there next to him.

This had not been how she'd anticipated her night would turn out. She had never been the romantic type. Had loved but never been _in_ love. Never expressed her emotions and kept herself guarded. She'd never felt such a compulsion to touch, to feel, to be near someone else like she was this very moment, lying alone in this cold bed and wishing she had pulled him into her car with her like she'd had half a mind to do before they'd parted ways.

He'd walked her so slowly to her car, and while she wasn't sure how, she knew that he felt that same ache, the same anxiety at separating that she felt.

It was the strangest damn thing, but she couldn't get enough.

Quil had opened her car door for her, and just before she turned to get in, he'd hugged her so tightly, so reverently that it made her want to cry. She fit so perfectly there, her nose buried in his chest just below his collarbone and his chin resting on the crown of her head. She'd never in her whole life experienced anything like it. It was reminiscent of the homesickness she had felt that first night in her dorm room when she went away to college, the first night she'd ever truly been away from her family. But this feeling—it took that homesickness and amplified it to an extreme desperation.

He'd gently pried himself away when he heard her try to stifle a yawn. "Alright. As much as I would like to keep you on the res, Claire, I really want you to make it safely back to your hotel."

And she had found herself so wanting to stay at his concerned words. Her knee-jerk reaction was to be ridiculously disappointed that he hadn't offered her a ride back, or even a place to stay the night—his own bed would have been perfectly agreeable to her. But that was her instincts, her base needs talking, she rationalized with herself. He wouldn't've had a way to get back home, or they would've had to leave her rental at the beach, and the implications of them leaving the bonfire together to one place or another would have probably resulted in a night of certain activities that came about too fast, too soon.

But holy fuck, she knew it would've been good. Would've felt right.

He had lifted the hand he held to his lips and placed a lingering kiss there, his eyes luminescent and burning into her own. She could do nothing but look up at him with hooded eyes, her knees going weak, forcing her to grasp on to the car door for dear life.

"Good night, Claire," he'd whispered against her skin. "Text me when you get there so I know you made it safe."

She, of course, hadn't had a clue that he had every intention of phasing and following her all the way back, or that he planned to sit vigil in the woods behind the lodge the whole night, (where he currently sat listening to her toss and turn and grumble, wishing more than anything he could do the wrong _but oh so right_ thing by barging in and climbing underneath her). The text was just an excuse to get her coveted phone number.

She wouldn't have minded this ruse even if she'd known.

"Okay. Night." She'd replied dreamily, like a lovelorn adolescent, as she lowered herself in the car and shut the door on him. He stood to the side as she turned the key in the ignition, her eyes never leaving him. Just as she reached the gear shift, her brain had clicked back on and she hurriedly rolled down the window.

"Quil!" she'd called, unnecessarily loud considering his close proximity.

She huffed at the memory of how excitable she'd sounded.

"Yes, Claire?" He had smiled at her patiently, coming over to place his hands on either side of her window as he leaned in towards her.

"Will I see you at Emily's tomorrow?"

He had regarded her silently for a moment, looking down and wanting nothing more than to close the distance between his mouth and hers.

But he'd settled for a "You can count on it." Her face was radiant.

She drove back to Forks on an emotional high. She contemplated calling Jules but thought better of it. She wanted to keep this fledgling feeling to herself for a while, wanted to foster it and feel it bloom discreetly within her.

Plus Jules would probably think she'd lost her marbles. _Claire_ thought she'd lost her marbles, but she couldn't bring herself to give a singular damn.

She felt like she might combust at any moment right here in this over-starched bed; the memory of his warm, strong arms wrapped around her was so overwhelming that he might as well have been in the room with her. A familiar need ripped through her, pushing her towards an inevitable precipice. Rationality turned off and habit kicked in as she slipped a hand down below the comforter and into the waistband of her pajama pants. She relied mindlessly on the routine she'd fallen into not long after the initial spark with Derrick had faded and he no longer seemed concerned with what _she_ might need out of their bedroom activities.

Didn't care what it meant that it was Quil's face and hands she imagined as her hips rolled underneath her ministrations, even though she hadn't known him for more than half a day.

He was the embodiment of something she had been looking for her whole life.

And unbeknownst to her, he was standing out in the woods right now, could hear exactly what she was doing to herself in that tiny hotel room.

Curiosity at what had caused her breathing to pick up had kept Quil's paws planted firmly in the dirt, but after the first delicious moan passed her lips he had phased back human and run like hell, in what direction he didn't know. Just ran away from those sounds that were making his blood boil in his veins and his brain lose all sense of awareness.

If he'd stayed any longer he would've heard her whisper his name into the darkness with a shudder, and all his good sense and resolve would've been shot to hell.

As it was, he was going to have a very hard time minding his manners tomorrow.

Claire came down from the rush of oxytocin and endorphins completely unsatisfied. Deciding a cold shower might calm her raging hormones, she crawled out of bed, stripping her clothes off as she padded to the bathroom. After turning the water on, she stepped into the shower and braced her hands on the tiles in front of her as she stood under the spray, trying to keep her mind off of Quil.

It was basically impossible. So instead of thinking about his body, _lord, that body,_ she thought about the things she'd learned about him. Tala had bragged at how hard he worked and how much of his free time he had invested in improving the lives of others on the res. That he was a math whiz, "a numbers geek," she had worded it, keeping the books at the garage and managing the tribal accounts. Claire giggled at the thought of how indignant he had appeared at being called a geek, until she told him that "nerdy" had been her type in college. He perked up a bit after that.

He was a genuinely good person. A ridiculously attractive genuinely good person.

Why in the world he was interested in her, she didn't understand. She knew she wasn't exactly a mountain troll, and she had good hair and teeth and self-confidence, had "good boobs" as a random high school boy had so informed her during gym once. But to her, now that she was out from under the warmth of his penetrating scrutiny, she felt objectively so far below his league that it wasn't even funny. Standing in the shower, running a rough hotel wash cloth over her body, she could feel all the places on her that were too soft, too squishy. She had a tummy that did interesting things when she sat or ran, had some flab on her arms. Her legs were long and still sturdy from years of softball and muscle conditioning, but age was adding marks and spider veins. She was a regular, salt-of-the-earth kind of girl.

He was…something out of this world.

And there she went thinking about his body again.

 _Get a grip, Claire._ She was unsure how many times she had chastised herself with this line, would undoubtedly use it innumerably in the coming days if Quil was involved in anything her family decided to include her in.

Claire had decided right off the bat that she loved this newfound family of hers. Every single one of them had seemed sincerely pleased, at times she thought relieved, to see her. None had thought her immediate connection to Quil was strange. In fact, her aunt had stared at the two of them for a good portion of the night looking so happy that is was overwhelming.

Claire wasn't naïve. Something was going on in this place where the men and a couple of the women looked like impeccably attractive models the size of oak trees. It was genetically impossible to be so warm, or to have an uncanny, unnatural grace about them, or for people who weren't closely related to look so similar to each other.

And then there was this whole bit about her and Quil. She knew, deep down, that there was something brewing underneath the surface between the two of them. It freaked her out but there was no way that something that felt this soul-wrenchingly good could be sinister, right?

So she would be patient. She had two weeks here, and hopefully, if everyone warmed up to her and became comfortable with her presence, she could get someone to spill the beans about what exactly had happened here twenty-two years ago. She'd allowed herself to get wrapped up in the feeling of her family, of finding her roots, in the tingling heat of Quil's presence, but she vowed that one way or another, she would get what she came here for.

With that thought propelling her forward, she dried off, threw on the first thing she could pull out of her suitcase, and collapsed back into bed.

* * *

A soft light spilled through the thin curtains, across the commercial carpet, and glared off the screen of the television.

Claire popped one eye open, took a hateful look at the alarm clock that flashed a bright red "8:00 AM" at her, then groaned and rolled over, planting her face into the musty scent of a pillow that should've been replaced about fifteen years ago.

A loud knock reverberated through the room.

Ah, yes, that's what had woken her up. Someone was at the door; someone looking for a swift death.

Another knock came, this time more insistent. Without a thought, Claire threw the covers off of her body, too angry to realize how cold the air around her was and not thinking to pull her hoodie over her head.

Too bleary-eyed to look through the peep hole, she snapped the locks out of place and yanked the door open with a huff and a screech. "What?!"

It was at this moment that Claire noticed four things.

The first was that it was absolutely frigid outside. The second was that her thin t-shirt did nothing to shield the more…sensitive…parts of her body from this ungodly temperature. The third was that Quil Ateara looked just as magnificent bathed in the morning light as he did by the flames of a bonfire flickering against his handsome, tanned face.

And the fourth was that he was staring straight at her boobs with a laser-like focus, boobs that parts of which were currently on proud display for both God and man to view at their leisure.

With a shudder, she brought her arms up and across her chest, awkwardly bending her shoulders over to shield herself from the cold.

Too stunned to move, Quil desperately looked anywhere but at Claire, his mouth opening and closing like a fish as his eyes moved from his shoes to the door jamb to the night stand to the bed… _nope Quil, can't look there either…_ and then immediately back to the safest place, his shoes.

"Well, I can certainly say that this is one of the most interesting ways I've ever greeted the day," she rasped.

His eyes snapped back to her as he finally found his voice, the left side of his mouth quirking up in a smirk. "You're welcome?"

Claire grinned up at him from where she was still hunched over, eyes squinting against the bright morning rays of the sun. "I didn't say thank you."

He was about to reply when her body convulsed, a forceful cold chill ripping its way up her spine.

Quil stepped towards her immediately, moving to wrap himself around her, but hesitated given her current state of dress. He settled instead for herding her back into her room, closing the door behind them. In hindsight, this hadn't been a much better choice.

In that moment he knew that coming here had probably been a terrible idea. A very good idea in principle. But a terrible, no good, very bad one in practice. As soon as he shut the door, his preternatural nose had been assaulted by everything _Claire._ He could smell her shampoo, the lotion she'd put on last night, her natural sweet-almond scent, the astringent she used that sat open next to the sink, her toothpaste, and…

He glanced toward the bed, and then back at her.

It was faint, but he could smell the intoxicating aroma of _his mate_ and what she had been up to last night not three feet from where he stood.

He took a shuddering breath and closed his eyes. _Quil, you are an idiot._

Claire had noticed none of the internal battle displayed openly on his face in that moment, luckily having busied herself with wrapping her bathrobe around her body and shoving her feet into a pair of thick socks, all the while valiantly trying to pretend that having a colossal hunk of man witnessing her general morning chaos was a totally normal, not at all out of the ordinary thing.

She probably looked like a train wreck.

Quil thought she was the most endearing thing he had ever seen. Her mussed hair looked wild and soft, and his hands itched to tangle themselves in it. She had lines on her face and sleep in her eyes and now mismatched socks on her feet, but it seemed to him like something he'd give anything for if only to see her like this every morning.

Claire threw her hair into a ponytail, thankful that she'd ended up in the shower last night and thus avoided being seen in a state of grease-headedness.

Running out of the energy to continue fidgeting, she sat on the bed, crossing her legs and arms and looking up to where Quil still lingered in front of the door, hands in his pockets and looking wide-eyed like he'd just been caught stealing from the cookie jar. "So, to what do I owe this pleasant surprise?"

His shoulders relaxed and his face softened. "I thought I'd come take you to Em's for brunch, if you want."

Her head tilted uncertainly, and though the first retort on the tip of her tongue would normally have been something about being perfectly capable of driving herself, thank you very much, she choked on the words.

 _This was an opportunity way too good to pass up._ The thought thrummed through her mind and she felt flattered that he would drive all this way only to pick her up and go right back the way he'd come.

"I'd like that, but I have one condition."

He beamed at her. "Anything."

"I get to pick the music."

* * *

Pulling out of the hotel parking lot eighteen minutes and forty-eight seconds later (he'd been counting the seconds to distract himself from the fact that he'd been _sitting on her bed_ as she _took her clothes off_ behind the closed bathroom door _five feet away from him_ ), after an awkward tango of staying out of Claire's way while she readied herself for the day, Quil found himself coerced by a pair of pleading doe eyes into being the embarrassing, no-talent half of a duet performing a rousing rendition of Rocket Man.

He couldn't carry a tune in a bucket, but every time his voice cracked on a high note Claire laughed through her head bopping, interrupting the impeccable harmony she paired with the melody and ensuring that he would keep on singing until his vocal chords turned to dust if it made her happy.

One sneakered foot propped underneath her and the other resting on the dash, her toe tapping along with the beat, she made the passenger's bucket seat in his truck look like it had been made for her. His peripherals ran up the length of her legging-clad calf, over the bended slope of her knee where her clasped hands rested. Raked over her thigh, the slight supple curve of her stomach, then skipped up to her face. Her head bobbed along with the beat, her high, long ponytail swaying along at her movement.

How many times had he imagined himself in this very scenario? Desperately tried to envision what she would look like, how her personality would manifest itself in his presence?

He hadn't been able to stop himself from going to her this morning. He hadn't been able to sleep, not even for a moment. The combination of knowing exactly where she was, being so close to her, and the memory of what he'd inadvertently overheard in the early hours of the morning proved too potent to resist. He knew it was too early to be appropriate. Knew it would probably seem strange and forward to her. But none of those things outweighed the sheer need that coursed within him to be near her. He had to see her. To make sure the previous night hadn't been a figment of his imagination.

He was too lost in thought as he approached the door he could feel her behind to realize that she was still asleep. It wasn't until she'd thrown the door open and he'd seen the flash of incredulity in her eyes that he wavered.

And in that immediate moment of insecurity, his eyes had naturally drifted down and _Jesus fuck, had this been a bad idea._

"You alright, Quil?" Her concerned voice interrupted his rumination, bringing him back to the truck and the song and his Claire.

He flushed bright red at the turn of his thoughts that she'd caught him in and cleared his throat, the sound gruff against his ears. "Yeah, why?"

She raised her eyebrows at him and pursed her lips towards the right side of her face, pulling her aviators away from her eyes as she sized him up.

"You're lying."

"Excuse me?" He was unnerved by her accusation, attempting to cover this up with a poor attempt at sarcastic indignation.

She snickered at him. "You heard me. You're thinking so hard you look like you're about to have an aneurysm."

A moment's hesitation on his behalf paved the way for her next assertion.

"You were thinking about the veritable peep show you got this morning, weren't you?"

"What?! Was not!" He spluttered out, his face freezing into a mixed expression of horror and humility at having been called out so accurately.

Throwing herself back against the seat, her head plonking into the headrest with more force than he was comfortable with, she barked out a laugh. "Oh my God, you so were!"

He attempted to focus all his attention on the road in front of him, struck mute with embarrassment and positive that he was now a few shades redder than a cherry tomato.

Her laughter continued but she reached over and placed her right hand over his forearm that rested on the console between them.

Every nerve along the patch of his skin that Claire's palm and fingers were draped across zinged like she'd poked him with a live wire. She squeezed his arm reassuringly. "Sorry. Couldn't help myself."

So his imprint had a sense of humor that might be the death of his dignity. There were worse things that could happen to a guy, he supposed.

She angled herself back towards the windshield but, to his immense gratification, she didn't remove her hand from him.

"It's kind of creepy that the old man at the front desk of the hotel told you what room I was staying in, huh?"

He tensed up, torn between not wanting to be dishonest with her and having no real choice in the matter. He couldn't very well tell her he had _smelled_ his way to her. That he'd followed a supernatural pull to her door.

"Uh. Well, it's a small town, and Mr. Brandis is friends with my mom."

"Oh. I guess that's _slightly_ less concerning." She cocked a brow at him.

The truck went quiet as the song changed within the shuffle setting Claire had put on after plugging her phone into his radio, leaving a comfortable, crackling void between them.

As some upbeat alt-rock tune broke through the speakers, Quil turned his palm upwards and nudged his arm against Claire's hand. She laced her fingers through his, a shy smile spreading across her face.

Before she could stop herself, she breathed out, "Y'know, you really don't look like any desk jockey or politician I've ever seen."

"Oh yeah? Why is that?"

It was Claire's turn to blush, ducking her face as she wished she hadn't opened her mouth.

"It's because I'm so good looking, isn't it?" Quil eyed her with exaggerated seriousness, expecting a sarcastic retort. When it never came, he looked over at her, doing a double take at her dubious expression, eyes glued to the dashboard and her chin tucked toward her right shoulder. "You think I'm good looking!" He needled her, taking their clasped hands and nudging her thigh in an attempt to get her to look at him.

"Well, duh, who wouldn't?!" she half-screamed at him, her hackles rising and defensive instinct in the face of embarrassment on full display. She gave him a once over, rolling her eyes at how smug he looked. "And for God's sake, don't look so pleased with yourself. You're puffed up like a rooster."

He wasn't too proud to admit that he'd squared his shoulders a little wider at the thought that his imprint was attracted to him. _She likes you._ His wolf was certainly satisfied.

"You look like a statuesque Native American model and a concrete wall had a baby, and then that baby had a baby with a linebacker." Ah, the dry humor was back.

"I look like a model, huh?" Two could play at this game, and he was thoroughly enjoying himself now.

"It was a joke, Quil."

"Humor is the good-natured side of a truth."

"I don't know whether to be impressed that you're quoting Twain or sad that you've probably just had the best comeback of the day."

"Oh, you wanna hear a joke about comebacks?"

"Gah!" she huffed out, poorly covering her laughter with an exasperated expulsion of breath, tilting her head to the side and placing her hand over her eyes. Dragging her hand to the side of her face, Claire looked up at him with a giddy expression on her features. "So crass! I know that was meant to be dirty."

Quil shook his head at her, plastering a comically innocent look on his face as he gradually pressed the brake, coming to a stop and waiting for oncoming traffic to pass before turning off the 101 onto La Push Road.

"Not afraid of getting dirty, are you Claire?" He wasn't sure where it had come from, or where his filter had gone off to, but the words tinged the light-hearted mood in the truck with a sexual tension almost immediately. He wanted to kick himself for ruining the easy banter they'd had going, for likely offending her.

And yet Claire rose to his challenge. "I'm a nurse, Quil. I do 'dirty' impeccably well."

He gulped dryly, all the moisture leaving his mouth as her stare bared down on him, his dick twitching at the combination of the sultry way she'd said his name and the connotation she'd intoned in her words.

She'd been affected by it, too. He could smell her arousal, the increased pheromones flooding the truck cab as he steeled himself against the wolf's reaction to the onslaught of her want.

Sensing that he wasn't coping well in this new territory over some invisible line that they'd crossed, Claire pulled her hand from his and turned fully towards the front of the truck.

Both his hands locked around the steering wheel in a vice grip as he tried to get his bearings. He breathed exclusively through his mouth so as not to add fuel to the fire, trying to calm his racing mind and erase the image he'd conjured in his head of Claire in a skimpy nurse outfit.

Claire cleared her throat and fidgeted in her seat, her hands disappearing under the outsides of her thighs as she sat on them in an attempt to keep herself from reaching over and grabbing him.

Closing her eyes and leaning her head against the window, Claire sighed as she felt her tendency for being uncomfortably honest well up from within her chest and come spilling out of her mouth. "I feel like a horny teenage boy around you."

This earned her a strangled, breathy laugh from her chauffeur. It also made Quil realize in a rush of elation that he wasn't alone in the struggle of what he was feeling.

And he had been alone for _so long._

 _Not anymore,_ his subconscious whispered to him, reveling in the reality that someone, something out there had brought him back his reason for living.

He took his right hand off the steering wheel and pressed against her left wrist invitingly. She acquiesced, her fingers intertwining with his once again.

Unable and now unwilling to control himself after her admission, Quil pulled the back of her hand to his mouth, grazing his lips over each of her knuckles. "Ditto," he whispered though upturned lips, a side glance over at her breathless, hooded expression confirming for the man what the wolf had known since the moment he'd heard her voice again.

He was going to fall in love with Claire.


	7. Chapter 7

**A/N: This story is some of the most enjoyable writing I've done. I'm so pleased that you guys are along for the ride! This chapter is a bit of a rollercoaster, but I hope that I've done it justice and that it doesn't jerk you around too much. For those interested, up until three weeks ago Quil was still just a shadowy figure in the back of my mind, but then I saw an article about rugby players and specifically the picture of a certain New Zealander, and it clicked right into place for me. So if you want to know who I'm imagining as I write, go check out some images of Sonny Bill Williams. The smile, the height, the stockier frame that I picture Quil having is perfectly embodied in him. He's definitely easy on the eyes, too. For Claire, go check out Candice Huffine. She's taller than I imagine Claire being but her face and shape and the personality that comes across in her photos are spot on. That being said, I hope you enjoy this next installment! As always, your feedback and constructive criticism are greatly appreciated, and I'd love to hear what you think of this one!**

 **Disclaimer: I am not Stephanie Meyer and I do not own Twilight.**

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The rest of their trip was uneventful. Neither had been willing to interrupt the tenuous calm that had settled after Claire's declaration, and so she had resumed her singing and he had been content to just listen to her voice, tapping the beat of whatever song she played onto the top of the steering wheel with his thumb.

Their little interaction had left Claire more confused than she'd ever been in her life, but she reminded herself of the vow she'd made in the shower much earlier that morning that she would be patient, and so she battled the feeling back and focused on the present. That this included a very pleasant tingling sensation that radiated up her arm from where her skin was touching Quil's was quite an agreeable consolation prize to her.

"We're not too early, are we?" Claire hadn't really thought about what time brunch might start, had trusted that Quil would have the superior knowledge about this by virtue of probably having gone to a few of these things before. But glancing at the clock and seeing that it was still only just before nine (not to mention that brunch in her mind implied noontime mimosas and bagel sandwiches), she suddenly felt insecure the closer inward onto the reservation that they went.

"Nah, Sam and Em never sleep in. Plus I have a feeling there will be few more people there than usual, so she'll probably need a couple extra sets of hands on deck today anyway, if you aren't opposed to helping out."

Claire looked at him skeptically. "Why?"

He glanced over at her thoughtfully as he maneuvered through a curve in the road. "You coming back is the most interesting thing to happen around here for a while. You should probably prepare yourself to be bombarded."

She groaned and laid her head back against the seat. "Emily sold this to me as a quiet family thing! How is it possible that I didn't meet everyone yesterday?"

Quil sniffed a laugh at her. "It _is_ a family thing but it definitely won't be quiet, I can assure you of that. And you met everyone, but they were giving you space yesterday. Letting you have some time to get your bearings."

"So you're driving me into the wolf's den, huh?" she teased. The reaction she'd gotten wasn't quite what she'd expected.

Quil's stare snapped to her, looking panicked, and the quick motion of his upper body turning towards her jerked the steering wheel, swerving the right tires of his truck off the shoulder of the road. Claire gripped the oh-shit handle as he ripped his hand out of hers to correct the wheel and, once he'd reentered the middle of the lane, he gave her form a once over, making sure she was still in one piece and then breathing out a sharp huff of relief.

"What was that about?" Her eyes widened at him as she took in his shaken expression.

"Sorry. Zoned out for a sec."

"Yeah, I'm not buying that, but whatever." Claire crossed her arms over her chest in response to the hand he'd laid back over the console toward her, but another glance at him and his dejected demeanor through her peripherals made her heart clench, and her hand wound itself back into his.

He smiled that thousand-watt smile at her, his dimples flipping something over in the pit of her stomach.

She blushed and ducked her head, a grin blooming on her face nonetheless.

As they finally found themselves jostling up the Uleys' gravel driveway, Claire could see flashes of bright yellow shutters through the dense green foliage. Deep burgundy petunias closely busheled in beech wood window box planters were suspended over large, trimmed forsythia bushes that lined the front of the house and skirted the covered porch. Her aunt's apparently vibrant taste echoed throughout the whole visible exterior of the house, and the rustic warmth of the place nestled within the depression of thick trees reminded Claire of some staged photo in a home and garden magazine. Pulling up into what appeared to be a makeshift dirt parking lot, she could make out the shape of her uncle lounging in one of a pair Adirondack chairs that sat like sentinels off to the side of the front door. He was clad in flannel pajama pants and a t-shirt and sipping on a cup of coffee, not looking at all surprised that his newly-returned niece had come early to brunch with his former pack mate in tow less than a full day after her arrival.

Though he wasn't surprised to see Quil trailing along after Claire, let it not be said that Sam Uley wasn't extremely curious to see the two walk up to his house looking practically joined at the hip. As such, he quirked an eyebrow at the hands that had met as soon as they came into proximity of each other in front of the truck they'd just hopped out of, but sipped his coffee without comment.

"'Morning, Uncle Sam." Claire plodded up the three steps towards him, leaning her right shoulder against the railing, Quil coming to a stop on the step below her and clinging to her like she might drift away if he let her go.

"'Morning, Claire." Sam took another mouthful of coffee before he turned and leveled Quil with a sardonic raise of his eyebrow, dipping his chin in a nod. "Quil. Wasn't expecting _you_ this morning."

"Oh, you weren't?" Quil's words had a disbelieving edge to them and he quirked his head like he knew better.

Claire was thrown off by this exchange but wasn't given time to think about it when Sam let out a dark chuckle, standing from his chair with an audible pop from his knees that elicited a deep groan from somewhere in his chest. He turned towards her and jerked his head towards the sliding glass door that led into the kitchen. "Don't get old, kid. Everything hurts and you wake up too damn early for no reason."

He strode through the entryway with a confident, lazy swagger. "The boys and your grandmother are still in bed but Em's putting a load of laundry on. She should be down in a second." He pointed towards a stainless-steel kettle on the stove. "Coffee's fresh if you want some."

"Oh, no thanks, I'm not a coffee drinker." Both men looked at her like she'd grown a third arm, and she laughed.

"How do you function in society?" Quil asked, poking her side with his index finger as he finally let go of his vice grip on her, grabbing a mug out of a cabinet he had the familiarity to go straight to.

"Let's just say I'm keeping Coca-Cola in business and leave it at that." Claire took a seat on one of the long benches arranged on either side of the oversized farmhouse table, folding her arms on top of the sturdy, stained wood. Sam dropped down opposite her, both looking on as Quil poured a mug-full of the black liquid and started rummaging through a silverware drawer, digging for a spoon to dole out sugar from the bowl on the counter.

"So, Claire, I heard you're planning on being here for two weeks?" Sam had angled towards her, eyeing her with a curious, underhanded expression that, _surprise, Claire_ , was something else to add to the list of things she didn't understand.

Quil went silent, still stooped over the drawer but barely daring to breath, much less move, his every sense attuned to what would next come out of her mouth.

"Yeah. I had almost eighty hours of vacation time saved up and it's been a while since I've had a break from real life, so I figured I would take the opportunity and come out here." At this, she heard her aunt's quick footsteps on the stairs.

"Is that Claire's voice I hear?" Emily asked, stepping down from the staircase at the back of the house and walking down the short hallway towards the three people assembled in her kitchen. She hugged Claire fiercely before passing by her and leaning in to kiss Sam, then moved to prop a hip against the side of the counter Quil stood behind.

"Good morning, Aunt Emily. Sorry I'm so early, but Quil practically dragged me out of bed at the crack of dawn to come here." Claire realized the connotation of her words as soon as they left her mouth, and she turned bright pink. Emily raised her eyebrows, arms akimbo as she stood glancing back and forth between the two of them with an amused smirk on her face.

Quil, who had finally managed to move from his stupor above the cutlery, let out a booming laugh. "I picked you up at eight am! That's hardly the crack of dawn."

"It is when you didn't let me leave the bonfire until, like, five hours before said wake-up call!"

Quil was quickly realizing that his imprint was easily roused into this feisty attitude that she was currently displaying.

It was sexy as all hell. Her left eyebrow raised defiantly. Her shoulders back and her chest pushed out, hands flat in front of her on the table. Her eyes daring him to disagree with her.

She was perfect. And he couldn't stop himself from prodding at her further, desperate for more of the strange, giddy feeling that came from their verbal sparring.

"You could've left whenever you wanted to. I wouldn't have stopped you." It was then that her face fell and he thought maybe he'd gone too far. She looked, dare he hope, rejected.

And while this burned at his soul, caused him physical pain that he'd hurt her feelings, his wolf howled inside of him. _She didn't want to leave you. She's sad because she thinks you were apathetic about her staying._

But before he could throw himself at her feet to grovel out his apology, she slammed some kind of invisible barrier down behind her eyes, her emotions now completely cut off from him, and the hurt expression was replaced with a sneer. "Says the one who couldn't keep his eyes—or his hands— off me last night, or this morning, for that matter." Her lip curled up in satisfaction and she leaned back, bringing one leg up to rest a knee on the table as she folded her hands in front of her.

"Says the horny teenage boy," he shot back at her, embarrassment coloring his features from his hairline down to the column of his throat at her indictment. Claire's jaw dropped and she was about to respond when Sam made a noise that sounded like he was swallowing his tongue. This brought the two sparring imprints crashing back into the reality of where they were: not at all alone, and in Claire's long-lost aunt's kitchen, in front of said long-lost aunt and her husband who looked like he was about to stroke out.

"Sorry," Quil and Claire mumbled simultaneously, both at least having the decency to look ashamed of themselves even though they were mostly just discomfited and not at all apologetic.

Sam looked shell-shocked, but Emily, bless her heart, was trying extremely hard not to laugh as she placed a calming hand on the juncture of her husband's neck and shoulder.

Quil eyed Claire softly, hoping to wordlessly convey what he was feeling in that moment.

Apprehension, excitement, pride.

 _She challenged you,_ his wolf leered lasciviously, eyeing her appreciatively. _She's strong._

Standing two feet from her uncle, who was glaring at him like he'd just started the apocalypse or something, Quil thought that it couldn't be a worse time for any input from the peanut gallery that was his wolf's incessant, untimely internal monologue.

Claire felt like she'd just had an out-of-body experience. She was usually honest, yes, but normally wasn't so brazen, _especially_ in front of other people. That damn man brought something out in her that she hardly recognized.

She liked it and hated it at the same time.

It was a totally inappropriate setting but he'd riled her up just like before in his truck, and now, like then, she felt totally consumed with lust for him. It was insanity.

"Well, interesting and enlightening as this has been, I'd better get to work. God only knows who's showing up here today. Quil, I'm volunteering you for slice and dice duty."

"Em, I thought you said this would be a quiet, low-key thing?" Claire found her voice again and teased her aunt with the sarcastic accusation, standing from the table to cross into the kitchen behind Quil.

Emily didn't look the least bit ruffled. "Quiet is relative around here, sweetheart. Even if it was just us and my boys, you'd still feel like you were in the middle of a daycare center at playtime."

And that was the most accurate comparison Claire had heard in her life. An hour after being roped into baking what seemed like two hundred muffins ( _seriously though, how many people was her aunt planning to feed?)_ , her youngest cousin, the newly-teenaged Gabe, pounded down the stairs sounding more like a herd of water buffalo than a gangly brace-faced boy. Not ten seconds after he landed on the hardwood and muttered a shy "hello" at her, completely ignoring everyone else in the room, the sound of something beating the ceiling preceded a bellow that came from somewhere above Claire's head.

"Gabriel effing Uley, WHAT did I tell you about making all that damn noise in the morning?!"

Gabe snickered and Sam looked at him exasperatedly before standing up and pounding his fist on the ceiling.

Lord, they were all so freakishly tall.

"Levi, what have your mother and I said about screaming across the house?" Sam yelled back. Claire snickered at how antithetical the volume of his tone seemed in comparison to his words.

Sam smiled at her, shaking his head. "Be glad you only had a sister."

Claire laughed from her position at the side of the island that took up most of the middle of the kitchen, whisking egg yolks for yet another round of muffin batter. "Tallin was more than enough to grow up with. Her… _exuberant_ personality meant she was always railroading me as a kid. I think I would've _really_ got lost in the shuffle if someone added a brother to the mix."

Quil eyed her from where he stood to the right of the sink, having angled himself over the cutting board so that he'd only have to glance up and to his left to see Claire. "She wasn't mean to you, was she?" He hadn't meant for it to come out as heated as it had, but the thought of anyone, even her sister, treating her badly incensed the wolf and made Quil upset to think that he hadn't been there to shield her from it.

"Oh, she wasn't so bad, and we're actually pretty close now even though I don't get to see her very much. She was just a typical older sibling. She wanted absolutely nothing to do with her kid sister because she thought I was weird and that I 'cramped her style.'"

"That's how Dena was with me. Definitely a sister thing." Emily smiled sadly, her thoughts obviously far away on a time when her family wasn't splintered in two. Sam sidled up beside her, whispering an apology and kissing the three scars that marred the right side of her face despite her shaking her head at him, refuting his words.

Claire looked away from the intimate scene, training her gaze on the muffin batter in the hopes that it would give her the answers to the universe.

What would it feel like if Tallin were to completely cut her off? She couldn't fathom it. Her sister had given her a hard time a kid, sure, but as she got older and they had both matured, she'd gone to Tallin for advice about all kinds of things, from maneuvering out in the world as a grown up, to sex, to apartment hunting, to getting over a broken heart, and everything in between. Claire hadn't divulged everything about herself to her sister, but they had each other's backs, no questions asked. There wasn't anything Claire could think of that would make her abandon her sister. How had her mother done it? Why?

The next few minutes were spent in strained silence until the rest of the Uley house awoke.

The two younger boys found their way to the living room once Levi decided to grace them with his presence, planting themselves in front of the television for whatever Sunday shoot-em-up blockbuster marathon was running on cable. Noah, the oldest and arguably the most physically mature nineteen-year-old dude Claire had ever seen, sauntered in from a room off the back of the den, clad only in a pair of cut off shorts with an impeccable set of abs on full display as he jerked the fridge open and pulled out one of the pitchers of freshly-squeezed orange juice Emily had just made.

 _What the hell were these people putting in the water?_ Claire wondered how many times she was going to ask herself that question before it was no longer something she noticed, noting with curiosity how fluid her cousin's movements were. Plus, wasn't he freezing? It was Claire's version of winter out there and he was wearing practically nothing.

Another weird thing to add to the list.

Emily wiped her hands on a drying cloth and tossed it haphazardly across the dish drain, bringing the last clean muffin tin to Claire to begin apportioning the mix. "Where's grandma at?" Claire asked, concern for the woman who'd drawn her out of herself so easily the night before coloring her tone.

"Don't let her hear you call her grandma. She likes YaYa. Thinks it's hip or something," Noah informed her as he reached a finger into the batter bowl, popping the digit into his mouth and raking it clean with his teeth before touching her cheek with it.

"Gross," Claire groaned. "But thanks for the heads up." He nodded at her and made his way over to the other side of the island, slumping over it and looking too exhausted for someone who'd just rolled out of bed.

Emily sighed heavily, somehow miraculously pushing her son out of the way as tiny as she was compared to him. "I've got to get her up soon. She was worn down after last night and wasn't looking too good when we got home so I figured I'd let her sleep in, but it's past time for her to take her medication." She reached into a cabinet beside of the fridge, pulling out a plastic bag that held no less than ten pill bottles. Claire winced, recognizing some of the generic names used to treat pain, nausea, and fatigue that she frequently administered to terminal patients in the ICU.

"Emily…" Claire hesitated, unsure if she was ready to delve into the topic but her nurse's brain needing to know the answer to at least this. "How far along is the cancer? She looks like it's taking everything out of her."

Emily braced herself on the counter. Quil abandoned the chef's knife and turned towards the group, his arms crossing over his chest as he leaned back into the cabinets. Claire felt anxious, and it ratcheted up his own nerves.

"It's not good, Claire. Not at all. She…" Emily paused, attempting to choke back her emotion.

"I'm sorry, Emily. We don't have to talk about this now." Claire rested a comforting hand over her aunt's, wishing that she hadn't said anything.

"No. I've never said this out loud, and I need to. You need to know and I need to face the reality of what's going on and why you came." She ran a hand over her face, wiping the tears that were still falling from her face. Sam had wrapped an arm around her shoulders and the room had once again fallen into a tense stillness.

"She was diagnosed two months ago. She's been sick for a while but she's always been stubborn as hell and refused to go to the hospital in Forks until I forced her to go, kicking and screaming. It started as ovarian cancer and spread…everywhere in her lower organs." Claire felt a lump lodge itself in her throat and, as Emily continued, it made its way down, settling heavily in the pit of her stomach. "They gave her a year at most with treatment, six months, probably less, without it. And of course, she heard that and refused surgery or treatment."

"I figured. Those are palliative care medications she's taking." She paused to consider her next words, but, as her practiced workplace frankness demanded, she resumed her train of thought with earnest. "Emily, I don't want to presume anything, but if it's lack of access or insurance, I can make some phone calls. Because leaving it untreated can be just as bad as chemo or radiation. I've seen it first-hand. Didn't they tell her…" She trailed off, too consumed by the tumult rolling inside of her.

Emily let out a sarcastic, brusque chuckle. "Oh, they told her. And she listened…maybe. I think in her mind there's no value in the treatment. But it's her decision and as much as I wish I could change her mind, it's been made up."

Claire sucked her bottom lip in between her teeth, torn between being an adamant granddaughter, a realistic medical professional, and a compassionate nurse. She instinctually sought out the comfort of Quil's gaze, and she found him already staring at her with his usual profound intensity.

Claire had driven into this town knowing her grandmother was sick, had steeled herself for what she would find here, but the types of medications that Emily had set out on the counter and the gravity in her voice indicated to Claire the magnitude of the situation. Her grandmother was only going to be alive for a very, very short time.

And her own mother either hadn't understood how serious it was or hadn't cared to find out. Emily, sweet, kind Emily who seemed to take care of everyone around her, the aunt her mom never spoke of unless it was to disparage her, had been left with the burden of caring for their sick mother on her own.

It was all suddenly too much and Claire felt like the room was suffocating her.

"I need some air."

She untied the apron Emily had given her from around her waist, dropping it on the table as she passed it on her way out. Sliding the glass door closed behind her, she walked to the extreme edge of the porch where the railing ended, out of view of the windows and her family, and sat heavily on the unvarnished wood, her legs dangling down over the edge and feet brushing the tops of her aunt's bushes.

Head in her hands, she took a few deep inhales of the fresh, clean air that carried the scent of the cedar trees that loomed over her.

 _Get yourself together, Claire. Remember, you're being patient._

The sharp swing in the temperament of her day threw her for a loop. The deeply-rooted longing for a complete stranger, embarrassment at her own feelings and her reaction to him, and now the desperate hopelessness of her grandmother's impending fate that rolled over her like a tidal wave and threatened to consume her were more emotions than she had the bandwidth to get a handle on. Add on to that anger at her mother, at her father, for not being here, for not wanting _her_ here, and she was lost in a maelstrom with no way to get her bearings.

Her parents were good people. This was something that she'd always just _known,_ something she'd never questioned. As she grew older she realized that they were human, too, they made mistakes just like her. But in her mind, their turning a blind eye to what was going on here was too much to reconcile at the moment.

 _They have to have a good reason, though, Claire. They have to._

She would call them tonight. Tell them exactly where she was and the direness of the situation and she knew they'd see reason. They had to.

The door slid open quietly behind her and she didn't have to look up to know who it was. She could _feel_ him there as surely as if he were one of her own limbs.

Yet another thing to pile on to her mounting consternation.

Quil had watched her leave the room with an ebb and flow of trepidation.

Watching her walk away, even if it wasn't technically from him, was more than his flimsily patched up insides could take.

He moved immediately to follow her, but Sam's halting grasp on his shoulder gave him pause. "Just give her a minute, Quil. This is some heavy shit to deal with, even for us. She's spent her whole life with one idea of us and Em just pulled the rug out from under her. Give her a little space."

Quil's eyes paced back and forth between Sam's. This was the man who had sat with him for days after he'd first turned, easing him into his transition to the supernatural. The man who'd trusted him, _believed_ him after he'd first imprinted on Claire that it wasn't the sick thing that everyone first thought. Who'd helped hold him together when his world had exploded at the seams so long ago.

He had more respect for Sam than almost anyone else in his life, but that wasn't going to be enough for the wolf this time.

"Sam…I can't. The wolf…he won't let me, not when I can _feel_ her out there hurting. I have to go to her."

And more than anyone else, Sam knew the ancillary pain of a hurting imprint.

Sam's hand slid off his shoulder to pat his back, and with a nod, Quil turned to catch up to his heart that had already followed her out the door.

She was slumped over herself taking steady, calculated breaths, feet kicking and heels tapping some unknown rhythm into the bricks that served as the foundation for the house.

"Claire?" No response. "Claire, are you okay?"

She looked up at him irritably, bringing her legs up and crossing them underneath her, elbows resting on her knees. He sat down to her right, leaning back against the house and stretching his legs behind her, crossing them at the ankles.

"You can talk to me, y'know." His voice was so gentle, so damn caring towards her that it hurt.

But she was too angry to let it affect her, and her vow to be patient went straight to hell as she lost all sense of self-restraint.

" _Do_ I know that? Do I know _you?_ No. I don't." Quil winced, but waited patiently. He could sense that there was something bubbling underneath the surface, so he would be quiet and let her say her piece. It had been so long since he'd had a chance to just _be there_ for her, and he wasn't going to blow it, his wolf be damned.

"I came here hoping to have a chance to get to know my grandmother before…" She couldn't say the words. "And maybe to find out what the hell scared my parents off so long ago. And I get here and grand-… _YaYa_ …is taking meds they give to terminal hospice patients and Emily is having to deal with it all on her own. And everyone here seems so nice, so _kind_ towards one another that I don't understand why my mom isn't here. Why she didn't give one iota of a thought to coming here and checking on her mother. Why she thinks that Emily, EMILY of all people, who's basically a saint, is lying to her."

Claire huffed and rubbed her hands harshly over her face, closing her eyes and pretending that if she couldn't see him, he wouldn't be able to see her as the next words came out of her mouth. "I don't know why I'm telling you this. I don't understand _why_ , after knowing you for only twelve hours, that you make me feel so at home around you. It makes absolutely no logical sense but nothing else has ever felt more _right_. But I can _feel_ you. Tugging at my subconscious or something."

He wanted so badly to explain himself, but he didn't know how. His wolf jerked inside of him. _I know how to tell her. Just fucking tell her, that's how_.

"Claire, look-"

"And I know that something strange is going on around here." She cut him off, cutting her eyes to him abruptly, a look bordering on chastisement slicing through him. "I can sense that, too."

"You're right." He couldn't lie to her. Not when she looked like she did, when she was feeling like she was. Not when she was so damn _right._

Whatever she was expecting him to say, that certainly wasn't it.

Overcoming her momentary shock, she asked, "So what is it?"

He shook his head, closed his eyes, and craned his head back until it rested against the wood planks of Sam and Emily's house, willing himself to bring his churning emotions under control.

"It's complicated, Claire."

"Bullshit. That's a coward's answer." His eyes sprung open at her accusation as she swiveled around to face him, her chest heaving angrily, her expression seething, and Quil felt himself fall just a little further into the black hole that this connection between them had created. Something was welling up inside of him, sending his heart into a sprint, but he made the enormous mistake of ignoring it.

"It's the truth, Claire."

To her, his statement seemed like he was talking about the color of the sky or the breeze through the trees or something equally as trivial. What she'd interpreted as dispassion on his part in response to her ardent outburst only served to anger her further, and she exploded up onto her knees. She'd wanted a height advantage and she'd barely gotten it.

The wolf didn't like this. _She doesn't understand. We have to make her._

"What's the truth, Quil? Huh? That you're a coward?"

She knew she had gone too far when he stood up abruptly, something _feral_ , something otherworldly flashing in his eyes and knocking her back on her ass with a thump.

Quil was trying to beat back the wolf with everything he had in him. He jumped down from the porch intending to make a beeline for the woods, to get away from her when _that word_ she'd directed at him had provoked the wolf in a way Quil couldn't control. _Not a coward. She needs to understand. We lost her. We can't lose her again. Make her understand._

Maybe he couldn't control it because he felt the same fucking way.

But she was right there behind him, her hand on his arm and an apology he couldn't understand at the moment on her lips as he chanted _don't phase, don't phase, don't phase_ over and over in his head. Something had snapped within him and there was no coming back from it.

"Quil!" She screamed at him when she realized he was shaking violently. "Sam! Emily! HELP! Quil, I'm sorry!"

She was too close to him. He wrenched his eyes open, stumbling backwards, trying to get away.

Noah, _thank fucking God_ , was suddenly there, his arms wrapping around Claire and pulling her back away from his frenzied spiral.

She was safe, and despite decades of practice, there was absolutely no stopping the phase this time. Just before his muscles locked up in that familiar rush of pain, before his bones snapped and limbs extended in a rush of adrenaline and pulsating nerves, Quil fell to his hands and knees and spit out words at Claire from somewhere deep within him that he'd only escaped to one other time in his life. The time when he'd let the wolf take over so he could forget the agony he'd been in when she'd been torn away from him.

Claire was convinced that he was having the worst stress-induced seizure that had ever occurred. As she watched in disbelief, Quil looked almost pixelated, his voice unrecognizable as he cried out in pain. Her every atom ached to go to him, her brain kicking into triage mode as she struggled against the immoveable wall that was Noah Uley.

Quil fought hard against his wolf, but his efforts were beyond futile and he couldn't stop the words as his body blurred between two forms.

"You know what, Claire? I am a coward. And you want to know why?" His teeth ground together and he wanted to bite his own tongue off for the bitterness his wolf directed at her.

Claire froze, rendered immobile by her cousin's firm grip, the anger in Quil's tone, and the anticipation of what was about to come out of his mouth. She could feel his misery laced in the question he'd asked her like it was her own. His gaze was so intense that it was boring holes into her; the deep chocolate eyes she'd fallen into yesterday had been replaced by a blazing inferno.

He seemed like he was waiting for some kind of acknowledgement from her, so she nodded her head almost imperceptibly.

But he saw it. And for the rest of her life, the words that next came out of his mouth, the impossible magic that she was about to witness, would be burned like a brand into her heart.

Quil growled from some arcane place in his chest, his words coming out unbidden, but they were the most honest words he'd ever said. "Because I'm terrified that I'm gonna lose you again. That I'm gonna have to live another twenty-two years without you. Without the most important fucking part of me." He heaved in a loud, gasping swallow of air.

"You wanted to know why your parents took you away? Why you've felt empty most of your life? Why I feel like home? Well, here it is."

Suddenly, on an exhale of breath, Quil was gone.

And in his place stood a massive, chocolate-brown _wolf_.


	8. Chapter 8

**A/N: This chapter is the longest one I've ever written. If you're reading, I recommend you have a little time carved out to savor the details, but do with it what you will! A very big thank you to those who have reviewed, favorited, or followed this story. As always, feedback and constructive criticism is welcomed and appreciated. Enjoy!**

 **Disclaimer: I am not Stephanie Meyer, I do not own Twilight, and I am taking minimal creative license with the Quileute Tribal legends but have the utmost respect for them and hopefully have not done them a** **disservice.**

* * *

The millisecond after he phased, Quil felt dread roll through his veins like ice water in stark contrast to the body that was typically a preternaturally burning inferno.

What had he done?

 _You solved the problem._ His wolf tucked itself away, pleased and placated as Quil came back to himself, its objective accomplished without concern for how the details that followed would be hashed out.

He had most certainly _not_ solved _any_ problem, unless the problem was in figuring out how to exacerbate the problem beyond any recognizable or maneuverable territory.

Quil was _furious_ with himself.

In the early days after Claire had gone, after he'd lost himself to his wolf, that piece of himself had never really fully fused back when he'd finally had the strength to come back to a home that she was no longer part of. The wolf had once been just a niggling impulse, an urge when he'd first phased and rejoined his friends, gained the freedom and the power that came with being a wolf. It was an entity almost entirely different from himself. He had been a carefree teenager, always quick with a corny joke and a blasé attitude toward life and his responsibilities. Had never really taken _anything_ seriously until _she_ had come along. But with the other half of its being ripped away, the niggling of his wolf became a conscious invasion of his thoughts, and though he'd learned to control it with an iron fist, he felt more and more in his mind like the monster that his physicality morphed into.

But he had let it slip in the one moment that mattered most and now all the implications of that failure spun through his head at the speed of light.

It was a slow-motion film that played out in front of him as the shock began to register on Claire's face, mouth dropped open in a silent cry. She didn't move, just clung to her cousin's forearm, mooring herself in the tempest of raging thoughts Quil could see rush behind her eyes.

Shock and chagrin intermingled in the micro expressions that bounced around her facial muscles. Her mouth snapped shut and she took deep, steadying breaths through her nose.

She was starting to hyperventilate.

He took an instinctive step towards her. It was instantly apparent that that had been the precisely _wrong_ thing to do as she let a low, keening whimper escape her throat through her arduous panting while she pressed her body back so hard into Noah that she looked like she was trying to meld her body into his.

He could _smell_ her fear, and it pierced straight through his heart with a force more lethal than if she'd blasted him with a buckshot. It sent him immediately to his hind haunches, and another taste of it on his pallet brought in through a shallow inhale of air that was saturated with the scent of her panic pushed his snout into the dirt between splayed front paws with a piteous whine.

Quil wanted nothing more than to take back the last minute of his life. He'd had the tentative plan (when had _those_ ever worked out for him, though?) of somehow insinuating himself into all of Claire's activities during her time here. He would only have two weeks but he would have put everything else in his life on hold to spend every moment of that time with her. To really get to know her. To show her that he was someone worth having in her life, even if he didn't really believe it. It had moved beyond wanting to prove himself as unequivocally _right_ for her, just like he knew she was everything he'd ever need. It had become an obsessive need, like he would suffocate if he failed and she left without a backward glance. All the bullshit of telling himself he would be happy with whatever capacity he could have her in if he could just _have her_ had imploded after that first touch of her hand on the beach, that beguiling way she'd looked up at him and smiled. Twelve hours had proven to him that though he'd imprinted on her as a child, he had imprinted on her for the person, the woman she would become. The woman he'd never been able to envision until she stood before him on the beach last night like his salvation that had come at long last.

Who she had become in his absence was something he wouldn't have been able to comprehend even in his wildest dreams.

Strong, loyal, nurturing, opinionated, funny.

And he might very well have just ruined it.

Quil lay immobile in the dirt as Sam cautiously strode toward them to place a hand on his son's shoulder, guiding him slowly backwards as the new wolf pulled Claire away from the edge of the yard and the source of her consternation. Sam stepped in front of the two, being careful to allow Quil a clear line of sight on the retreating form of his imprint.

"Quil?"

The wolf's eyes snapped to Sam, acknowledging him with a brusque nod of his head.

Sam signed in relief. "Jake's on his way. We'll get this figured out."

Quil chuffed hot air and spittle blew out the flews of his muzzle as he inhaled and exhaled in time with Claire's heartbeat across the yard, his eyes betraying how unnerved he was as they paced back and forth between Sam and the spot where Noah had sat his imprint on the bottom step of the porch. Emily descended next to Claire to squat in front of where she had ducked her head between her spread legs, placing a calming hand on each of her niece's knees as she tried to instruct Claire's breathing down from its frenetic pace.

"Can you phase back, Quil?" Sam asked warily.

He nodded but remained rooted to his spot at the tree line, unable to take his concentration from the porch.

"We've got her. Go. You can't do either of you any good like this."

Closing his eyes against the vision of Emily pulling Claire's hair into a fist at the nape of her neck in an attempt to cool her down as she lay the other steadying hand on her right cheek, Quil slunk off into the cover of the foliage.

* * *

Claire sat stock still at the Uley's kitchen table, staring wide-eyed into the face of Jacob Black. That at no point had she fainted was a testament to the sheer iron grit and composure under adversity that had been drummed into her during her stint in the high-stakes environment of her job.

Nevertheless, she was pretty sure she had gone into shock. She felt numb as words like _shapeshifter_ and _Spirit Warrior_ and _Cold Ones_ and _tribal secret_ floated around in her head like swirling flecks of dust suspended within a beam of light. Barely there, impossible to focus on just one, and discombobulating to the point of questioning their corporeality. _High body heat. Fast healing. Enhanced olfactory senses and vison. Lightening reflexes and speed. They didn't age while they were still phasing._

The last one spoke volumes to her as the past and present coalesced in her mind.

"Is it contagious? Or transferrable?" were the only words she'd been able to get out of her mouth. She hadn't been joking (she was a nurse, after all), and no one laughed.

"It's genetic. Carried down through the bloodlines of the previous packs." Jacob's warm baritone was shored up by something _primal_ lurking under the surface of his furrowed brow. He was sending some kind of supernatural juju vibes her way that washed over her like silken honey. It had been his voice, his heavy hand pacing laps up and down her thoracic spine, his thigh flush with hers, that had coaxed her spluttering cognizance back into her body from where she'd left it in the yard.

Jake was the Alpha.

And according to him, she was somehow part of his _pack_.

Another word that hovered in her hazy mind, just out of reach of full comprehension.

They still hadn't explained where _she_ fit into this. Or her parents.

Or, besides the obvious, where _Quil_ fit in. Why she mattered so much to him.

Quil still hadn't come back to the house. Despite being scared out of her wits by the scene he'd caused out in the yard, it was instead the memory of his words that played in her mind as she sat at the table in silence after listening to Jake, Nessie, Noah, and her uncle and aunt volley information at her that she'd desperately tried to soak up.

" _I'm terrified that I'm gonna lose you again. That I'm gonna have to live another twenty-two years without you. Without the most important fucking part of me."_

The pain in his voice that had gone gravelly and inhuman flayed her heart even as all sense of what was logical, what was reality, was ripped away from her in the instant where his body blurred and he turned into something that shouldn't exist.

Closing her eyes at the phantom pain that percolated in her chest, she finally found her voice.

"My parents. They left because of this?" It explained a lot. Neither of her parents had any ties to the community besides Emily. If Claire'd had children to protect, it sure as hell would've crossed her mind to get them as far away from this place as possible.

But she would've let them explain. Just like she was doing now. The compulsion to know, to _understand_ , was driven partially by her innate curiosity of how the human body worked, how it could possibly coexist with a… _wolf_. It made no sense. She'd seen it with her own eyes, though, hadn't she?

Maybe she was far crazier than she'd initially feared.

Hesitant eyes averted her inquisitive stare as four of the people at the table attempted to look anywhere but at her, leaving her unanswered question hanging between them.

 _There was something else._

Jacob met her head-on, the confidence he'd had as he wove his ancestral stories for her wavering slightly in narrowed, observant eyes. "Partially."

A murmur, barely there and source unknown, whispered though the marrow of her bones. _She_ _knew why._ "It has to do with Quil, doesn't it?" She'd hit the bullseye. Jacob's face ticked, jaw listing downward as a brow hitched in subtle confirmation.

And like a siren calling a seafarer to treacherous shores, his name across her lips drew him from where he had been listening from his slumped crouch on the porch just beside the door to the kitchen, the man's utter refusal to frighten her further by traipsing into the house warring with the instinct of the wolf to bathe in the sound of her voice and plant himself in the salacious fragrance that called to him from the apex of her thighs.

He'd moved into the house as indolently as he possibly could. As soon as Claire saw him come into view on the other side of the sliding glass door, her heart picked up its pace and she flinched with a harsh swallow, but she didn't back down from the wounded stare he'd pinned her with through the glass, from eyes that never left hers as he opened the door and stepped over the threshold. He tucked his chin and folded his hands behind his back, resting them against the doorjamb and leaning his bulky frame into them in an attempt to appear as nonthreatening as possible.

Seeing him like this, crestfallen and devoid of the humor and easy-going manner that he'd fallen into with her between last night and this morning, had started a mêlée within the confines of her chest.

 _She needed to touch him_.

And before she could think about what she was doing, her body rose up abruptly from its seat between her aunt and uncle and she was moving towards him.

 _His was the hand she'd held so tightly as a child. He was the person she'd cried for every night when she was little. He was the memory her parents had insisted she didn't have so vehemently and for so long that she thought she was crazy._

It was as if a distant childhood dream jam-packed with thick, unexplainable emotion had materialized right in front of her.

He looked at her from under his lashes, loamy eyes cataloging every movement in poorly-concealed wonder at her advance towards him.

She stopped an arms-length away, raising a trembling hand to the bare skin of his chest where she could feel his heart sprinting underneath her palm. He covered her hand with his, couldn't help himself, and the new yet somehow familiar sensation lapped enticing warmth up her arm and into her very being.

"I'm connected to you somehow. That's what I feel, isn't it?"

Quil nodded, bewildered.

"Has it…has it always been like _this?_ " The earnest glint in her eyes betrayed the emotion behind her words.

He shook his head back and forth in a slow, calculated sway, still unable to make his mouth move to form the words that he desperately longed for her to hear.

 _Want you. Need you. Stay with me._

Now that she knew she wasn't crazy, she brought her previous observation—that he looked the same as he always had in all of her fuzzy recollections—to the forefront of her mind.

"How old were we when we met? Is that when…whatever this is…started?"

He took a deep breath and closed his eyes, leeching whatever comfort he could from her touch with the sinking feeling that after this conversation he'd never have it again.

His eyes remained closed as a sense of foreboding washed over him. He couldn't bear to see her reaction. "It's called imprinting, and yes, it is." He paused, terrified at the thought of continuing, but having no choice. She'd asked, and he would give her anything she wanted. "You were two. I was…I had just turned sixteen."

"You were…I was a _baby."_ The logical part of her brain, the part that demanded she had hallucinated a good portion of this day, reeled, horrified at the implication.

His hand pressed hers more firmly against his chest.

"It _wasn't like that._ It was _never_ like _this_. Not 'til yesterday _._ I would _kill myself_ before I hurt you." His eyes had sprung open, boring into her own with unadulterated genuineness, and he'd bitten the words out so emphatically that it left absolutely no room for any other truth than the one he'd lain before her. Supernaturally-derived certainty planted itself in her sternum and bloomed through her entire being.

She believed him. There was nothing she was more bones-deep sure about than the edict he'd just uttered.

 _I would kill myself before I hurt you._

But it was still so much, _too much_ , to process.

The ferocity of his affection oozing unabashedly from his face. The pieces of her past that fell easily into place within the narrative that had been just been woven for her. The direness of her grandmother's situation. The fact that her parents had known about, had whisked her away from the supernatural lurking in every corner of this place.

Had taken her away from _him._

God, what was she going to say to them? When she didn't return home from Jules' apartment tonight, where they'd thought she'd been all weekend, one of them would call. Would want to know where she was. Would she lie? Should she?

She realized that she hadn't said anything in response to Quil's revelation when his warm fingers traced over where hers still rested on his left pec, tenderly grazing the back side of her hand and making their way across her wrist and up the length of her arm.

It lit her body on fire.

 _And he could probably smell it._

She jerked back as embarrassment brought her back to the room with a harsh dose of reality, his arm left outstretched and motionless in the space she'd just vacated.

Quil recoiled at the look that spread across her beautiful, dusky features, confused at the stark contrast between her rigid, closed-off body language and the arousal he could scent on her.

"Claire-"

"I've gotta go." She interrupted his whispered plea, instincts screaming at her to wrap herself around him as her brain sprinted to make sense of the totality of the day.

She needed space. She needed time.

"Claire, _please,_ I—" The despondency that laced around her name, around his plea as it crossed his lips nearly ripped her in two, and she turned away from him as she cut him off once again, looking entreatingly at the faces gathered around the kitchen table.

"Can someone take me back to my hotel?" Her request dropped like a lead anchor in the middle of the room.

Quil said her name again, rasping it out with a moan from behind her. He couldn't lose her again, but he didn't know how he could possibly stop her if she really wanted to leave.

She shuttered out a breath as she turned back to him. His unreservedly crushed countenance softened her resolve, but she knew herself, knew she needed to remove herself from the overwhelm of his presence to be able to think clearly.

"I'm sorry, I just…I need to be alone. I need…" His emphatic nod as she trailed off threw her for a loop.

"Whatever you need, Claire." His eyes misted over as a tentative hand reached out for her shoulder, stopping a hair's breadth from making contact. "Can I just—?"

He wanted to hug her. She wanted it, too.

But she realized it had been a bad idea as soon as she lurched into him, his body rocking back at the unexpected force.

One arm wrapped around her shoulders, the other resting parallel to the back of her arm as a hand came up to grip the back of her neck, pulling her deeper into the grotto of his embrace. As she nosed his chest, she could feel him inhale deeply, knew he was scenting her just like she was him.

 _Lord_ , had stepping into his arms been a bad idea _._ But it felt _so good._

 _Why would she ever leave them?_

"I'll never hurt you, Claire. In any way. I _need_ you to know that." There was an underlying meaning to his words and, as his hand fisted into her hair at the nape of her neck, she knew he wasn't just talking about hurting her physically.

There were so many ways that a man could hurt a woman. She knew from experience.

Whatever he'd woken inside her last night hummed contentedly. _This_ was where she was supposed to be. With him. _He would never hurt her._

"This is an interesting development." The tired voice of her grandmother jerked Claire out of her Quil-induced haze as she ripped herself from his hold and whipped around in one jerking movement.

The exhaustion on her grandmother's face sent Claire into immediate work mode. Grabbing onto the distraction like a life raft, she crossed the room, ignoring the looks she was getting from the table as she and Emily reached Aiyanna's side at the same time.

"Mom, I told you to stay in bed." After administering her medicine before Quil's outburst, Emily had in fact implored her mother not to step foot outside her room and into the volatile atmosphere that had permeated the house for the last two hours.

YaYa brushed her daughter off with a dismissive flick of her wrist. "Fiddle-faddle. My granddaughter's here and I wanted to see her."

"I was just about to leave, YaYa. You should really be resting." Claire watched as her grandmother glanced curiously from her to the space behind her that she knew Quil occupied.

"You just got here, child. Don't run off so soon." YaYa took Claire's hands in hers, their coldness shocking her granddaughter, but Claire's face remained schooled and passive.

"I have some…things I need to do. But I'll be back. I promise." She said this for the benefit of more than just her grandmother. Everyone had stared after her like she was about to bolt, and she could feel Quil's anxiety-laced nerves like they were her own.

"Now let's get you back to bed." Claire let YaYa lead her by the hand through a door off the side of the living room as Emily trailed behind them, balancing a tray with muffins and orange juice that she'd somehow materialized.

As they entered the bedroom, a look passed between her aunt and grandmother before their gazes turned towards Claire.

"You know now." So quietly she'd almost missed it, YaYa had whispered the words towards her with barely concealed relief. As Claire helped her lift her legs back into the bed and tucked the comforter around her, Aiyanna wrapped a shaking hand around her granddaughter's wrist, drawing her attention up to her eyes. "Process it. Don't let it eat you up. Come talk to me in a couple of days." Claire could only nod. Outside of Quil's presence, her thoughts unclouded and she realized just how fully consumed she felt by the emotions of today. She desperately needed to get out of here so she could fall apart.

She sat at the edge of the bed and bent at the waist to pull her YaYa into the fiercest hug she felt the older woman could manage. "You're tough, Claire. You'll be fine," Aiyanna murmured, stroking her hair and rocking her back and forth as much as her exhausted body would allow. Claire wanted to curl up here, and her mind was taken back to a moment that seemed so much further away than Friday morning when her young patient had been comforted by the warm antics of a caring grandfather.

She'd found her family. And no matter what happened with Quil, with the supernatural melodrama that she'd found herself embroiled in, or with her parents who likely would be furious at her, _this_ was something she could ground herself in.

Planting a childish kiss to her grandmother's cheek, Claire raised up and slid off the bed. She helped Emily set up the breakfast tray before saying her goodbyes to YaYa and promising she would be back later in the week for a long overdue conversation.

Claire made her way slowly out of the bedroom, walking through the living room and back to the kitchen where Jacob stood next to Quil, a hand on his friend's shoulder and a solemn but reassuring look on his face.

Jake turned to her with a sunny smile that didn't fit in with the tense atmosphere of the kitchen. "C'mon, Claire. Ness and I have to run by her grandpa's place so we'll give you a lift back to town."

With a glance through her peripherals back at where Quil stood with crossed arms against the counter, giving her a wide berth (and, unbeknownst to her, preventing himself from caging her in his grasp and never letting go), Claire let Ness wrap an arm around her shoulders and lead her out of the house.

* * *

His anguish at Claire's departure from the Uley house had only been mitigated by the fact that she was going in his Alpha's SUV and that she had promised her grandmother she'd be back later in the week.

Not to mention _that hug._ That soft, voluptuous body had pressed along every plane of his torso, fusing itself to his skin and to his memory. He didn't think she realized what she was doing, but she'd bumped and nuzzled her cheek against his chest like he and his pack mates did in wolf form to reconnect and vie for dominance.

She'd been instinctually asserting her claim over him.

 _If only she knew what kind of power she wielded._

After she'd gone, Sam had all but dragged him out onto the porch, shoving him down into one of the wooden chairs and plopping himself down in the other with a huff, dragging a palm down his face.

"That turned out a lot better than it might have." Sam had infused his words with a hopefulness that didn't reach Quil's ears.

"That was a disaster." Quil slumped over his knees and cradled his face in his hands.

A hand clapped over his shoulder once, twice, then rested there with a squeeze. "She's not jumping on the next plane. I'd say that's a win."

"Give it time," Quil mumbled into his fingers.

"You know, that grumpy-ass attitude is _not_ gonna get you the girl, dude." Noah had come ambling out of the house with a cock-sure, naïve confidence that he'd perfected over the past year of being a wolf.

"Not now, Noah." Quil bit the words at him.

"He's got a point you know." Quil looked pointedly at Sam, who laughed. "Well, he does! You're acting like the world is crumbling around you when you've got Claire fifteen miles away and _clearly_ interested in you. Give her a day or two of space and use it to figure out where that old charming Ateara went off to."

Quil quirked his head at him skeptically, moving to rest his elbows on his knees and folding his hands in front of him. "I lost my shit today, and you're encouraging me to _woo_ your niece, Uley?"

Sam rolled his eyes as Noah let out a snort. The retired wolf cracked his neck, huffed an impatient breath through his nose, and knocked his head against the back of the chair before leaning over and leveling Quil with a look more serious than had crossed his face in a long time.

"Listen carefully because I'm only gonna say this one time. I'm telling you to get your head out of your ass and try and let yourself _hope_ for once. She's my niece, but you're my _pack brother_ , Quil. You're a good _man._ You've devoted every minute of your life to this reservation for twenty-some years trying to forget about Claire. For whatever reason, _she came back_. And two days after hopping on a plane all alone to come here to meet a family she didn't know, and after finding out just how sick Aiyanna is, she's found out about all this other shit that took us _months_ to get a handle on even though we grew up hearing about it and lived it. And _she didn't run._ What does that say about her?Give her some credit. Give _yourself_ some credit, and figure out how to be a part of her life so you can be happy like you deserve. Like you _both_ deserve."

And with that, Sam flopped back into his chair. "I should've been a damn therapist."

Sam and Emily strong-armed him into staying for dinner. On his way to Sam's that morning to do damage control, Jake had gotten the word out warning everyone away from the Uleys' so as not to pile on more overwhelm to the shaken Claire, and so there was more food than the household of six could put away, even with a bottomless pit of a young wolf under their roof.

He attempted to beg off as soon as he finished helping Em wash up, making sure to give Sam, Emily, and Noah his heartfelt thanks for everything they'd done for him that morning. He'd almost made it out the door before a soft voice called his name from the back of the house.

And so he padded back to YaYa's bedroom, where he could still smell the faint scent of Claire lingering on the comforter she'd tucked around her grandmother earlier in the day.

"Yes ma'am?" he muttered cheekily, plastering a smile on his face with an eyebrow raised as he walked toward the bed. An easy repertoire had blossomed between the two of them over the years, rooted in their shared loss and grief.

Aiyanna patted the bed next to her and he complied, sitting down next to her as softly as he could so he didn't dip the bed.

Reaching for his hand, she stared up at him with eyes and features that looked like the sunset version of Claire's. "So, what do you think of my youngest granddaughter?"

Quil closed his eyes, a ghost of a smile spreading across his face. She'd asked him that same question a _long_ time ago. Had been there with him and Emily as they'd tried to explain things to Claire's parents.

Aiyanna was a perceptive person. She'd been a councilwoman up in Neah Bay and had been made privy to the secrets of the Quileute after Sam had lost control and disfigured her daughter. Had taken it all in stride with a shrewd eye and warm heart and been there in the periphery as Emily helped Sam mold the pack dynamic into the well-oiled machine that it would later become. Had been the person Emily went to for guidance on how to explain the imprint to Dena and her husband.

It had been her idea to give them time to get used to Quil before dropping the bomb on them. She who had vouched that Claire had taken a liking to him and that he would be a suitable babysitter for her and Tallin.

Aiyanna had gotten him the best months of his life, and he wasn't sure he'd ever be able to repay her for them.

And like all those years ago, he responded, "She's _everything._ "

A nostalgic expression washed over her face. "My daughter did a good job with her."

The words hit Quil like a punch to the gut. The wolf's hatred of his imprint's parents was readily apparent. Quil had always had a hard time not feeling at least a little bitter about things, but he also couldn't really blame them.

Now that she was here, it didn't really matter all that much to him anymore.

"Yeah. She did." Quil couldn't deny that Todd and Dena had raised Claire well, not when she was as perfect as she was.

"Claire is a very different person than her mother, though. She's brave. Has gumption."

Quil had to sniff a laugh at that. "Yes, she certainly does." The memories of her clipped words in the truck this morning as she argued with him, her bold admissions, and of her struggling against her cousin to get to him as he'd fought his wolf out in the yard for control floated to the forefront of his mind.

"She's brave, but she's wrapped up in her head. Give her a little space but don't let her stew too long."

"What is it with the people in this house playing matchmaker, huh?" He tried to joke with her but she looked at him with a deadpanned expression.

"You're a pretty specimen, but you're kind of dense."

His mouth dropped open and he gave her leg a playful shove as she let out a quiet chuckle. "Nice to know you think so highly of me, YaYa."

She looked at him with shining eyes and brought a hand to his cheek. "You're a good kid, Quil. Now get out of here and go make my granddaughter fall in love with you."

* * *

If Saturday had been the best day of his life, Sunday had certainly been the longest. It didn't help that the day had bled into the two that followed as he lay wolfed out and restless in the cover of the woods outside of Claire's hotel room, unable to sleep except in those short periods that she had drifted off.

He wanted so badly to go to her, to take Sam's and her grandmother's advice and barge in there to pledge his undying devotion.

But she'd asked for time and far be it from him to deny her anything.

It had been a very dangerous exercise in self-restraint. Luckily there hadn't been a repeat of her Saturday night activities, which led him to believe that maybe she could feel him out here just as surely as he could feel her in there.

He'd done a decent job of shutting his mind off from the rest of his pack as they came and went from patrols. The last thing he needed was input from the peanut gallery. Jake had come to check on him several times, as had Embry, both attempting to persuade him to go home and at least eat something, but it was to no avail.

It wasn't until about four in the morning on Wednesday that someone decided to pull out the big guns by sending Tala to try and talk some sense into him.

"You smell like shit," she crooned through the pack mind.

He didn't respond, just rolled over onto his other side, curling his tail around himself and turning away from where she loped towards him through the trees.

"What, you think if you fester out here long enough she'll notice the stench and come investigate?"

She came into view and he half-heartedly bared at his teeth at her. Claire's mood was affecting him more than he cared to admit.

"You're feeding off each other's idiocy, you realize that, right?"

"Go _away_ , Tala."

" _Go away, Tala_ ," she mocked back at him.

He snuffed his irritation into the dirt but refused to take the bait.

"Do you trust me?" she asked him earnestly, her demeanor doing a complete turnaround.

It was enough to throw him off and get his attention. She was a wily little asshole.

" _Most_ of the time, yeah."

She padded over to him on all fours and plopped herself down on top of him, her torso laying perpendicular over his hindquarters. He let out a dramatic grunt and bucked his legs, but she didn't budge.

"Well, this should be one of those times. _Go home._ Eat. Wash the funk off of your ass. She'll come to you."

"I seriously doubt that."

"Quil, I'm a woman. I know more than you and I _know_ that she'll come to you when she can't feel you out here anymore. If I'm wrong, you never have to listen to a word I say ever again."

He snorted. "Mmm-hmm. Sure."

"Your mother is worried sick about you." Ah, she pulled the trump card. She'd come to play dirty.

"Seriously. She called me last night saying she hasn't heard from you in days. She was already freaked out because you've been, like, tweaking or something for weeks since Claire answered Charlie's call. Been walking around like there's a firing squad following you. Not to mention she's pissed that she had to hear through Billy that Claire's finally back."

Quil winced and Tala rolled off of him, standing up triumphantly as she felt his acquiescence.

"You're the worst."

"Yeah, you love me. Now seriously, go fucking _bathe._ Jesus."

* * *

Claire was most certainly not the type to wallow. Claire was a doer. A go-for-it-and-hope-you-don't-die kind of woman. Nothing made that clearer than her spur of the moment decision to fly three thousand miles across the entire continent on the off chance that her parents were wrong, on the off chance that the unknown of La Push was what her intuition had been pushing her towards.

In retrospect, her decision had paid off. She had gotten the explanations that she'd come here for.

Yet so many questions remained. So many issues unsolved. Her life had, if anything, gotten _more_ complicated.

After Jake and Nessie dropped her off Sunday afternoon, passing their phone numbers and home address to her in the event that she needed someone to talk to, she texted her parents that she was going to be at Jules' for a few more days. Her mom sent her a sad face but she was twenty-five years old, hadn't lived at home for years now, and they would get over it.

Flopping down flat on her back along the bed, tapping a few more buttons on her phone, she hovered over the familiar face in her 'favorite contacts' list before clicking on the name and turning on the speaker phone, the shrill ring tone echoing through the dark room.

"Claire, you're alive." Jules almost never called her by her actual name. Claire wanted to feel bad that she hadn't reached out last night, but the emotional torrent that had barreled down on her today had sapped her of the ability to feel anything other than weighty confusion.

"Yeah. Jules, I-" She stopped, unsure how to convey to her closest friend the emotional turmoil she was in. She'd sworn her absolute discretion to Jacob like a blood oath, but she _needed_ to talk to someone outside of this bizarre fairytale.

"What's wrong? Were the people at the bonfire creeps? Did anyone hurt you, Cee? Because if they did, I swear, I'm hopping on the next flight out and coming to kick some ass." Her friend's indignation had risen with every anteceding word she spoke.

Claire couldn't help but croak out a watery laugh.

"Are you crying right now?"

"Yeah. Weird, right?" Claire shoved a fist through the tears that had at some unknown point fallen from her eyes and collected under her nose.

"Jesus, Claire. I don't think I've ever seen you cry."

"Technically you can't see me. But yeah, you have. Remember in tenth grade when that line drive Carmen Peck hit popped me square in the knee and I almost threw up, it hurt so bad?"

Jules snorted. "I don't think that counts."

Claire sniffed another laugh. "Maybe not."

Just having her closest friend's voice on the other side of the phone had done wonders to calm her down.

"I found my family, Jules. And they're…they're _so great._ "

A sharp inhale came through the line. "Claire, that's amazing. Why do I hear a 'but' in there, though?"

Claire blew the air out of her mouth so forcefully that it inflated her cheeks. "Because there is a 'but.' I know why my parents hate this place. I can't talk about it. It's some cuckoo private family drama, but…I'm not sure what to do."

"You're not sure what to say to mom and pop." This is what Claire loved most about Jules. She didn't try to stick her nose across boundaries that Claire set up, and while she thought of Claire's family as her own, even called them by those familial terms of endearment, her loyalty was always to her best friend.

Plus the uncannily perceptive girl could read Claire like a book.

"No. I'm not."

"Do you feel comfortable staying there?"

Claire let Jules' question hang suspended for a few moments, but as soon as it had been asked, she knew the answer.

"Yes. Don't get me wrong, some weird shit happened here. I freaked out at first but I let them explain. I don't think my parents did."

"Does that surprise you? Your parents are _kinda_ no-nonsense, Type-A like that. Like when they caught the tail-end of our conversation about Laura sleeping with Joel after prom and grounded you for a week because they thought you'd lost your virginity in the back of a pick-up truck."

They both had a laugh at the memory. "Joke's on them, though, because their classy daughter waited till a drunken college frat party to have her cherry popped, right Cee?"

"Jules! Geez!"

Jules let out a snorting belly laugh, and Claire was brought out of her funk, if only for a blessed moment.

"Seriously though, Claire, you're smart. Regardless of what happened, if they're nice, if they care about you, I'd say stick around and form your _own_ opinion. Deal with the fallout from your parents later. Enjoy your time there if that's what you want to do. You know I'd give anything to find out who my family is."

"I know, Jules."

"You're not a bad substitute though, I guess." It was meant to be sarcastic, but Claire could hear the truth of the sentiment behind the lilt in her words, the hurting foster kid that Jules hid underneath a sarcastic, happy-go-lucky exterior.

"I love you, too, Jay."

A derisive sniff floated into her ear. "Enough mushy stuff. Any hot guys out there to help bang Derrick out of your mind?"

"Julia! Please!"

"Oh, so there is someone! You work fast, don't you?"

Claire's mouth opened and closed like a fish out of water, unable to speak.

"Wait, wait, wait, there _is_ someone? I was joking! You've been there two days, how the hell did you manage that?!"

"Quil's a friend of the family. He was at the bonfire."

"Quil, huh? That's…exotic. Kinda sexy."

Claire had no idea she had something like it in her, but possessiveness rolled through her and she actually _growled_ her displeasure at her friend.

"Umm, what the fuck was that? Did you just growl at me?!" Jules' voice screeched at her incredulously before a giggle rolled through the earpiece. "Oh lord. This doesn't bode well. You're not gonna leave me to move to La Push and get married to this clown and pop out babies, are you?"

"Let's not get ahead of ourselves, now, Jay! Holy shit!" Claire wanted to melt into the bedspread, wanted to tell herself that she wasn't sure why her friend's words had pleased whatever primitive impulse that was now rolling around in her stomach.

But she knew why.

 _Imprinting._

"You sound terrified which means you've thought about it." Jules needled her with the words, teasing and airy.

If only she knew.

"You're hilarious."

"I know. Thinking about taking my routine on the road."

Claire laughed and shook her head. Julia's so-called funny statement had brought her right back to the place she'd been at before her call, leaving her unsettled and adrift.

Their conversation had reached its natural end and Jules begged off, sensing Claire needed some time to herself.

"Just promise me one thing, Claire."

"Anything for you, Jules."

"If La Push is what you've been looking for, don't think too hard about it. You deserve this. Don't come back to Georgia with any regrets."

"Thanks, best friend. You have no idea how much I appreciate you."

"Yeah, yeah, whatever. Be safe, Claire. Try not to get knocked up your first time with lover-boy."

"OhmyGod, this discussion is over."

Claire said goodbye and hung up on the sound of Jules' raucous laughter, trying desperately to put the image those words had engendered out of her head and calm her racing heart.

The zing they'd sent to other portions of her body were another matter entirely.

 _This was so fucked up._

Taking a deep, settling breath, Claire changed into her pajamas and collapsed back onto the bed, willing her mind to go blank.

Then she spent two days laying holed up in her hotel room, not eating or showering or sleeping, but _wallowing_. And it had been fine because at some point on Sunday night a serene hum had begun in her subconscious and then she could _feel_ Quil in the woods just outside her window, wallowing with her. His presence had lulled her to sleep three nights in a row. And the excitement (that she wouldn't admit to herself she felt) at the thought that he was so close woke her up every morning.

But when she'd drifted into consciousness on Wednesday, he hadn't been there anymore. It was the most unsettling thing she'd ever felt. The loss of him snapped her out of whatever emotional overload she'd been hypnotized under for the last forty-eight hours, and she wondered at the gaping hole that had been left behind.

Was _this_ how it had been for him the last two decades? This _emptiness_? This phantom _ache_ that radiated through her entire being?

The thought took the already broken pieces of her heart and pulverized them.

 _How had he stood it?_

She'd come to the decision over the past couple of days that she would, should, _could_ trust him, unequivocally. This bond that she felt with him had slipped into the cracks of her soul that she somehow knew had been created all those years ago when they'd been separated.

Anger at her parents had eventually given way to her love and trust in them. They had likely done what they thought was best, and though they'd been wrong to pass judgment so quickly, been misguided in their attempt to safeguard their children, they'd uprooted their _entire lives_ to, in their mind, protect her.

That what they'd done had resulted in two very splintered halves of a whole was something they had no way of understanding.

 _Because they didn't bother to try._ That insidious thought still lurked around on the edges of her subconscious, attempting to ignite a rage within her.

But Claire wasn't a child, and nothing in life was so black and white.

She couldn't change her grandmother's health or her mind. She was going to have to figure out, with time, how to be okay with that and just enjoy the relationship as it had been laid out in front of her. She was going to get to know the rest of her family, maybe give her younger male cousins a hard time since she'd never had brothers or younger siblings. There was nothing she could do about her parents right now either, not that she particularly wanted to talk to them at the moment anyways despite her tentative acceptance of their choice.

But there was something she could do about Quil.

Despite being an avid adherent to her do first, act later philosophy, Claire was completely and totally out of her element in this matter to the point that it was overwhelming. She had nothing to go on besides whatthis thing between the two of them was called and how it felt.

On the car ride to Forks on Sunday, Ness had attempted to explain to her some of what this imprinting business entailed, but Claire had apologized and told her she just couldn't deal with any more supernatural bullshit at the moment. Nessie had smiled patiently and made herself available to Claire whenever she was ready to talk.

Having been imprinted on at a young age herself, Ness would be the best source for the information Claire needed to sort this out in her head. Hopefully the half-vampire hybrid (another topic Claire had tried to shrewdly internalize) wouldn't mind answering some of Claire's more…personal…questions, because her aunt was _absolutely_ out of the question, she didn't think Tala would take it seriously plus the girl was extremely close to Quil ( _talk about awkward_ ), and Claire didn't really know any of the other imprints other than in passing.

With a new purpose laid out in front of her, Claire dug the piece of paper that held the other woman's phone number out of the pocket of her jeans from their spot crumpled in the floor, then punched the numbers briskly into her phone.

The line picked up before the first ring had finished its piercing sound.

"Hello?" The familiar soprano lilt and kind tone reinforced Claire's decision.

"Hey, Nessie? It's Claire. Do you have any free time this afternoon?"


	9. Chapter 9

**AN: Thank you to everyone who has reviewed, favorited, and followed my story, and also to those of you just reading along! This chapter got away from me and is stupid long, but crafting the two scenes below in a parallel way was important to me and I hope I've done this installment justice. As always, your feedback and constructive criticism is most welcomed. I hope you enjoy my latest update, and also that you all have a very happy holiday season!**

 **Disclaimer: I do not own Twilight or the Jonathan Safran Foer quote in the body of this chapter. I have also taken some creative license with the Quileute tribal legends, hopefully in a way that respectfully maintains their integrity.**

* * *

Cool water sluiced down Quil's body from the showerhead he stood under, shoulders half-hunched and content to let the spray pelt him in his face and run in rivulets from his forehead down the planes of his nose where some dove off onto into the laminate tub below, others curving a trail across the slope of his chin before plummeting towards his neck and chest. His hands braced either side of the wall in front of him, left knee bent forward and right leg slightly behind him. It was the only way he'd managed to fit into this tiny shower at his mother's house since he was sixteen years old.

He hadn't been able to go to his own house. Had been too afraid to be left alone to simmer in his thoughts and in the events of the past few days, though he wasn't faring too well in that respect here, either.

Decades of half-living had planted a kind of bitterness within Quil that had become his constant companion, despite the face he put on for the people he cared about. He had been a happy sixteen-year-old, content in his newfound role as tribal protector and to be palling around with his friends again when his world had tilted on its axis upon imprinting. Seventeen when Claire's grounding presence had been ripped out from under him, leaving him floating adrift and lonely in a soul-deep way he couldn't, didn't want to comprehend at the time. As a teenage boy with the solitary goal of keeping a smile on his toddler imprint's face, he hadn't been able to grasp what being without her would mean in the long run, hadn't been able to think past not being able to protect and watch over her. But as he got older, as his emotional maturity caught up to the supernatural growth his body had experienced, as he watched everyone around him move on with their lives while he existed in a stasis waiting for something that might never happen, he began to realize just what he had lost. A best friend. A companion. His soulmate. Someone to walk through life with in whatever capacity Claire would have chosen. He'd thrown himself into all those other things—work and tribal responsibilities and the pack—for his own benefit; to forget what he had slowly realized he'd lost.

And while seeing her again had reoriented him, while getting to hold her and touch her and breathe her in had gone a long way in bringing him fully back to himself, whoever that was supposed to be anymore, he knew that only time would truly heal the deep, cutting wounds that had grown little by little every day for so very long.

But he only had a week and a half, may not even have _that_ now that he'd gone and let the wolf out of the bag.

The one glimmer of hope that he clung to there under the now-frigid water was that she had promised YaYa she would come back to La Push. She had heard them out, had listened, and, most astonishingly, had still given in to the pull she felt towards him as she hugged him so fiercely in her aunt's kitchen.

He'd been on autopilot since Sunday when Claire had gone back to Forks and, if he was being honest with himself, hadn't really processed the fact that he'd phased in front of her, that she knew what they were to each other, or, hell, that Claire was even really _back._ It had been easy to lay numb in the woods near her, where he hadn't had to think or feel or do anything but be close to her. Now that he was out of the dense fog that her presence seemed to generate, now that the reality of their situation had settled onto his shoulders, he felt like he was waiting for the bottom to drop out from under him like it always seemed to do.

It didn't help that the reality included Claire having a life three thousand miles away from him. But that would be a bridge to cross once he figured out the more immediate problem of how he was even going to convince her to be in the same room with him after his complete loss of self-control over the weekend.

He hoped his mother, the person who had been there for him his whole life, who probably understood him and his situation better than anyone else, could give him some guidance on that end whenever he felt like he was ready to hear it. Several hours after Tala had convinced him to phase back, his mom had practically thrown herself at him when he walked through her door, her tears of relief at seeing him leaking onto his filthy bare chest as he held her.

"I've been so worried about you, you idiot." She squeezed him as tightly as she could, and though he barely felt the pressure she exerted on his rib cage, he let her warmth seep through him. "I'm so happy for you, Quilly. So, _so_ happy, that you're finally going to get the happiness you deserve. I can't wait to see her again."

He appreciated the sentiment, but he couldn't help but think that the lip service his mom and friends gave to who they thought he was, what they thought he'd been through, was trivial. That their assumption that things would be all hunky-dory now just because Claire had breezed into town for a few days was too easy.

Actually _living_ that shit, when his center of gravity had been torn away? Finding the mental fortitude, the physical strength to get up and _live_ every single day for thousands and _thousands_ of days when all he wanted to do was drown whatever shards were left of his soul underneath his surfboard _every single morning_ he went out into the waves? It would've been impossible to survive the depression he was constantly sieged by without the voice of the wolf in the back of his head chanting at him that she was still alive and living out there somewhere, that maybe one day she would come back and his world would be right again.

Hope and resignation warred within him every one of those days, and now?

That she hadn't left was the one thought keeping his sanity intact.

The smell of freshly cooked bacon and hot coffee wafted over the curtain rod and curled itself into the mist around him, hitting his nose like a sledgehammer and reminding him that he hadn't eaten in days. The fulfillment of such a base need calling to him from across the house effectively knocked him out of his own head, and he was grateful for the perspective.

He flicked the water off and reached around the shower curtain to grab a towel off the rack, slinging it around his waist before padding out of the bathroom to his childhood bedroom, hoping to find some clothes that would still fit.

His mom yelled down the hall after hearing his faint footsteps. "Quil, I made breakfast. Tala said you'd probably need everything I had in the kitchen." He could hear the amusement that seeped into her words.

"'Kay, Ma! Be there in a sec." He shook his head at the thought of his nosey pack-mate as he rifled through a beat up set of chest-of-drawers that hid an interesting blend of Quileute Tribal School shirts and jerseys from his time on the lacrosse team before he'd phased, a slew of too-small cut off shorts, and a couple of dirty magazines he and Embry had stolen when they were fourteen.

His mother _definitely_ hadn't been in here for a long time.

He settled on a pair of plaid pajama bottoms that had seen their better days and opted to forego a shirt. His mom had certainly gotten used to half-naked boys traipsing around her house, so this would be business as usual for her.

As he made his way toward the kitchen at the front of the house, he braced himself for the third-degree he was sure Joy Ateara was about to rain down on him for going MIA the past several days. She had lost her husband to the dangerously cold waters off of the Olympic coast after a storm caught his fishing expedition unawares when Quil had been just a toddler, and he knew that she worried endlessly that her son would succumb to whatever emotional turmoil roiled inside of him, would allow himself to drift away off into the same ocean his father had never been recovered from.

Honestly, he'd never been able to reassure her otherwise because he had always worried about it himself.

His mother bustled around the kitchen, pulling plates down from a cupboard above her head before turning her attention back to the bacon she had frying in a cast iron skillet on the stove top. She turned toward him with a wistful smile as he dragged a chair out from under the worn kitchen table, the metal feet scraping shrilly against the linoleum.

"Jake called while you were in the shower. Thought you might like to know that Claire made plans to go by his house today to talk with Ness. He also asked me to tell you that he expects for you to be at the shop today."

Hopefulness and dread rolled through him, but exhilaration fueled by the idea that Claire hadn't decided to hop on the first plane back east was only slightly marred by the resignation that he would have to admit that Tala had been right.

Quil wouldn't let himself think about the particulars or the outcome of his imprint's conversation with Ness. If he did, he wouldn't be able to stop himself from running over there to beg for her forgiveness, to beg her not to leave. It had been hard enough to restrain himself from utilizing her number that just sat there in his phone, taunting him since the pre-dawn hours when he'd phased back and felt the weight of the electronic device from where it rested against his leg in the pocket of his dirty cut-off shorts.

He could say nothing, do nothing but sigh heavily, a sound that prompted his mother to turn sideways at the counter, hip propped against the cabinet to the left of the stove as she appraised him through her peripherals.

"Do you want to talk about it?" she hedged hesitantly, eyebrows raised and a concerned purse to her lips as she flipped a slice of bacon over in the pan.

Quil sat heavily at the table, elbows propped on the edge as he allowed his head to drop into his hands to pull at still-wet hair. "Not really, no."

"Well, you know I won't push you, but I think maybe you should. I don't have to tell you this again, but you live in your head too damn much. I understood…I _understand_ , but sweetie, it helps to get it out." Joy pulled the meat out of the pan, adding it to a paper-towel lined plate already brimming with food before shuffling over to the table to set it in front of her son. She placed soothing hands on his, pulling them away from where they tormented the roots of his hair.

"Stop doing that. You're gonna give yourself bald spots."

Quil snorted and turned his palms over to clasp her hands in his. He couldn't look her in the eye, was afraid she would see everything he was feeling in them. "Yes, ma."

Her hand raised to his chin, tilting his head slightly and forcing him to look up at her.

"Things are going to work out, Quil. Somehow, someway, they'll work out. Your other half found her way back to you because that's how things are supposed to be. But you have to put the work in now, too, son. It won't be easy, but what's worth having never is."

Quil felt a knot form in his throat at her words and the way her motherly affection cocooned him. His strong, caring mother had irreparably lost the love of her life, his father, and had never gotten over it or moved on, but she still found it in herself to trust in fate, to motivate him to do the same.

"I'm scared, mom. I can't lose her again. But it's her choice. I think…I think it'll break me, but I can't, I _won't_ make her stay if she wants to go."

"Oh, baby," she crooned as she stooped in front of him to pull him into her arms. "All she needs is a chance to get to know the good, kind person that you are, and she won't ever want to leave."

He pulled away brusquely with a shake of his head. "She's known me for five days. Aside from the pull of the imprint and some vague childhood memories she has of me, she has no reason to want to get to know me. Not to mention she probably thinks I have self-control issues. Oh, and there's the tiny fact that she found out I turn into a _werewolf_ her second day of being here."

"Wait, she remembered you?" His mother's tone was one of genuine disbelief. Of course that had been the only part she'd heard. "She was three. Is that possible?"

"She said 'It's you' on the beach. Said she felt like she knew me. I didn't get a chance to ask for any particulars. I fucked up and lost it on Sunday before I could even have a real conversation with her." Quil's hands went back to his hair.

A thoughtful look crossed his mother's face. "Tala said the two of you looked awfully cozy at the bonfire. She figured it was the connection coaxing Claire along, but maybe there's more to it."

Quil growled. "Tala needs to mind her own damn business."

His mother let out a snort, standing back up with a pat to his shoulder and turning to the counter where the coffeemaker had just finished brewing a carafe.

"Oh, hush. That girl loves you. She has Embry, sure, but she also thinks the world of her 'annoying big brother, Quil.' Her words, not mine."

Quil shook his head again, a smile ghosting over his lips. Tala was certainly, for all intents and purposes and in all the ways that mattered, his little sister. After Claire had gone, when he'd come back to the reservation with his tail between his legs after his months-long stint being phased out and losing his mind, she'd been right there alongside Embry, Jake, Sam, Emily, and his mom in their attempt to pick up the pieces. She knew what it was like to lose someone who meant everything to you. Her mother had died when she was in middle school and she'd been thrown into a house with an alcoholic uncle and his abusive wife. Tala had been able to wheedle her way through the wall he'd built up around the deadness inside of him when no one else could, using her snark and wiliness to convince him to get up off his bedroom floor, uncurl the picture of Claire from his clenched fist, and start living again, even if it was only going through the motions. After Quil managed to pull the pieces he had left of himself together, Tala had moved in to the spare bedroom in the Ateara house at Joy's insistence until she and Embry could afford their own place.

Quil had flunked out of high school. He'd missed too many classes and, even if he hadn't, he didn't have the emotional fortitude to make it through. But after several years of relentless prodding by his mother and Emily to finish his education, he gave in. Tala had gone to the community college with him, earning credits towards her teaching degree while he got his GED. He then took economics and business administration classes after Jake finally finagled his, Embry's, and Paul's help in legitimizing his auto-repair business. He and Tala had carpooled every day, partly because they were both broke as shit back then, but mostly because it was Tala's way of pushing him along, of keeping him afloat and making sure he didn't disappear again like they all knew he wanted to.

Quil confided in Tala the things he imagined he would've told Claire had she been around to hear them. And Embry, the amazing person that he was, never said a word or gave a single complaint about all the time his best friend spent with his imprint.

Joy sat down across from him, balancing two mugs of coffee in one hand and her own breakfast plate in the other. Quil reached out and took a cup from her as he scarfed down a handful of the bacon in front of him.

His mother looked at him amusedly from over her coffee, taking a sip of the hot liquid before setting it on the table and folding her arms across her middle. "So."

"So, what?" The words came out of Quil's mouth garbled as he continued to shove much-needed sustenance into his face.

"So, tell me about her. Tell me about Claire." Her soft curiosity lightened his mood, and he couldn't help the beam that began on his lips and radiated out over his face. As much as the thought of her started a roiling, nauseous feeling in the pit of his stomach (mostly because of the sheer terror he felt that she would flee the state), the memory of the way her laughter lit up her face, the way his truck still smelled like her this morning when he'd picked it up from Sam's, and the feeling of her hand molded into his all fought against his melancholy, demanding a place in his heart.

"Uh-oh," his mother lilted, her arms unfolding and hands clasping as they came to rest on the table in front of her. "I know what _that_ look means."

"What look?" Quil tried to be indignant, but failed miserably. The Claire who had teased and laughed with him planted herself firmly in the forefront of his mind, and he knew the stupid grin on his face was like a giant spotlight on how deliriously happy he could be if only he would allow himself to believe it was possible.

Joy didn't respond, just leveled him with a look that said she knew what a bullshitter he was.

He leaned back in his chair, a laugh escaping his mouth as it mingled in with a sharp expulsion of breath.

"Claire is…" He paused, blinking unhurriedly as he searched for a word that would describe the girl—no, the _woman_ —who had upended his life so completely. "She's an amazing person, mom. Just like I knew she would be. But…more, somehow."

When Quil didn't offer any more information, Joy began peppering him with questions. "Where has she been? What's she been doing?"

"They finally ended up somewhere near Atlanta around the time Claire started high school, I guess. She never left. Works as a nurse at some fancy hospital. From her brief mention of it, it sounds like a pretty intense gig, but she's so smart. Confident."

"So she takes after her great aunt, then. Maybe Sue could help her get a job at Forks General."

"Mom, I think that's jumping the gun a bit, don't you?" He couldn't deny that the thought of Claire being in the Pacific Northwest on a permanent basis planted a strange, incredible feeling in his chest, but it was too much wishful thinking and definitely not grounded enough in reality. He couldn't think of anything beyond earning her friendship for the time being, and that would probably only happen if he was lucky.

Joy waved her hand at her son dismissively, but dropped the train of thought for another uncomfortable topic. "I take it her being snuggled up to you on the beach Saturday night means she's single?" She waggled her eyebrows at him and he rolled his eyes.

"What? I'm not getting any younger, Quil, and I'd like to meet at least one of my grandchildren before I die."

Quil nearly swallowed his tongue as his mother laughed at the alarmed expression on his face.

"Oh, don't look so constipated, Quil. I was just kidding. Sort of." She winked at him and turned her attention back to her coffee, oblivious to the inner turmoil she had sparked in the man sitting across from her.

Quil would be lying to himself if he didn't admit that he'd entertained such an idea, along with many other completely inappropriate and borderline-delusional ones in the past few days. Now that he'd seen her and held her, gotten a whiff of that delicious scent that was so uniquely _Claire_ , it was much easier for him to imagine how she might fit into his life now. An image of her laying on his couch, in his clothes, watching television. Brushing her teeth in his bathroom. Her waking up slowly beside of him, a radiant smile that was reserved just for him blooming in her eyes as she lay naked under his sheets. The images spiraled from there. Claire walking towards him down a makeshift aisle along the spot on the beach near the tide pools that had been theirs, dressed in white. Her round and swollen with his child.

Thoughts that were completely foreign to him and felt almost _wrong_ after years of only knowing the young girl she had been bombarded him. He knew that part of it was the spirit warrior inside of him adapting to her needs as an adult, but part of it was just him, just Quil, finally being able to envision his life with the Grown-Up Claire that had evaded him for so long. The one he'd realized at some point in the dirt in Forks he'd been waiting for and pining after since around her eighteenth birthday that he hadn't been there for. And even though he hadn't been there, something inside of him had recognized the change in her, even from so far away.

Like his mother could read the turn his mind had taken, she murmured, "I'm sure it's strange for you to see her as an adult after only knowing what she was like as a kid. Holding on to that image of her for so long."

"Yeah," Quil huffed. "But…it was almost like I imprinted on her all over again. Saturday, on the beach. Only it was _more_ this time. Deeper, somehow. I don't know. There aren't exactly any legends that tell a guy what to do when his long-lost child imprint comes back after twenty years, y'know?"

His mother opened her mouth to reply but a car engine rumbling down the driveway cut her off. "You expecting someone?" he asked her as he stood up and walked to the kitchen window that overlooked the side of the house, offering a view of the end of the road. Before she could answer, he got a look at who was headed their way.

"Oh, Jesus. It's the peanut gallery."

Paul waved from where he'd taken up residence in Jared's passenger seat, an annoying smirk on his face as the SUV Jared called the "Dad-Mobile" came to a stop just outside of the garage door.

"What are _they_ doing here?"

His mom shrugged and moved to the fridge, pulling out a carton of eggs before Quil's hand stilled her. "They're not staying and you're not wasting your food on them."

She gave him a look that told him she was going to do whatever she wanted, and continued on pulling ingredients for scrambled eggs out of the fridge.

Quil cut his eyes at her and made his way over to the front door, opening it just as Jared had raised his hand to the doorbell.

"What?"

"Hello to you too, sunshine," Jared said as he pushed past Quil to walk through the small foyer towards the kitchen. "Thought you'd be in a better mood, all things considered," he yelled over his shoulder before turning back to Quil's mother. "Mmm, something smells good, Mrs. A!"

His mother laughed at Jared's thousand-watt smile and boyish charm despite the fact that he was pushing forty, though he didn't look it.

Paul rolled his eyes as he stepped over the threshold with a friendly punch to Quil's shoulder. Even though the two were effectively middle-aged men and fathers of teens, they still acted like idiots once out from under the influence of their wives.

"Hey, lover boy." Quil absorbed the hit and the taunt with a scowl, the space between his eyebrows pulling down into a crease at Paul. Paul put his hands up with a shrug, eyebrows waggling sarcastically. "Someone's testy this morning."

Quil trailed along behind his former pack brother into the kitchen, shaking his head and wishing he'd just gone home, though that probably wouldn't have done him any good. It was likely that either Sam or Jake had sent Dumb and Dumber to check on him; to keep him away from the vicinity of Jake's home on Third Beach where Claire was set to end up at some point today.

"Joy, if I may be so bold, you are looking mighty ravishing this morning."

His mother giggled at Paul's overtures, and Quil landed a kidney punch on him as he walked by to reclaim his seat at the table. "Stop hitting on my mom before I call Rachel to come beat your ass up for giving me a hard time."

Paul heaved out a groan at the contact. "That's gonna bruise, dude."

"Eh, you'll live."

Paul plopped down in the chair on Quil's right as Jared laughed at the two of them, sneaking up beside Quil's mother and grabbing a piece of scrambled egg straight out of the pan.

"Jared, if you don't grab a seat and get out my kitchen, you're not eating here." She smacked him in the arm with the handle of her spatula, but the smile never left her face. Jared tipped his head, chewing the egg in his mouth as he crossed the room in three long strides, pulling out a chair with a sweep of his arm and lowering himself theatrically.

"Laying out of work this morning?" Quil asked the two men on either side of him.

"Could ask the same of you," Jared mumbled out around what was left of the egg in his mouth. "But for your information, classes don't start until 8:30 so I have half an hour before I need to be at QTS." Jared was the science teacher for the high school aged kids at the tribal school, much to the amusement of his pack brothers and the chagrin of his children.

"I'm here to drag you into the garage this morning, boss's orders," Paul grumbled. "He told me to tell you that your absence has left the books upside down, but we all know it's a lie and he just doesn't trust you not to go caveman on your imprint when she comes to the res today."

Quil glowered at Paul but didn't comment. It would be easier to give Claire the space she'd asked for if he had some way to occupy himself, anyway.

"Speaking of, how you doin,' Quil?" Jared leaned back in his chair, left ankle resting over his right knee as he leveled Quil with a serious gaze. Paul crossed his arms, face becoming serious at Jared's question as he hunched over the table, and Joy stilled her movements at the stove.

Quil took a deep breath, running a hand over his face and wondering how many times he was going to have to spit out his misery before the universe took pity on him.

"Terrible." Honesty was the best policy, Quil supposed.

"Looks like it. I can't imagine…" Paul trailed off from his line of thought. Despite his reputation as a sarcastic asshole and the decade that he'd been removed from his wolf, he still couldn't utter a word about being without his imprint.

"She's back, though," Jared muttered. "And no matter what happens, you know she's safe and she's healthy."

"But is that enough, Jared? Would it be enough for you to know that Kim was surviving? It sure as hell wouldn't cut it for me with Rach."

Jared contemplated Paul's words and hesitated for a moment before responding. "It's better than the alternative of not knowing anything at all, though, surely?"

Paul opened his mouth but Quil beat him to the punch. "As entertaining as I'm sure listening to you two old ladies bicker about my feelings would be, and as much as I appreciate your concern, I don't have the bandwidth for this shit right now. So I'm gonna finish my breakfast, go home and change, and head in to the shop. You're welcome to continue this later when I'm not around." With that, Quil shoveled another handful of bacon into his mouth, ignoring the dubious glances the other three in the room shared amongst themselves.

An awkwardly quiet fifteen minutes ensued, and after promising his mother he'd call her later, Quil traipsed out the back door of her house with his former pack mates in tow. Jared gently punched his shoulder, leveling him with a sympathetic glance before hopping in his car to head towards the school.

Paul clambered into the passenger seat of Quil's truck as the latter eased himself behind the steering wheel. Staring at the dash, Quil considered his next words carefully, afraid to say them out loud but unwilling to lie to himself.

"I think you're right, P. I don't think knowing she's safe and surviving is gonna be enough."

Paul nodded, pursing his lips and tapping his fingers on the door handle. "What are you gonna do?"

"Hell if I know. What would you do?" He couldn't help the desperation that colored his plea.

"Knowing that I could have the life I've had with my wife? Shit, I'd do whatever I had to. I'd beg. I'd plead. Fuck it all, I would stand outside Rachel's window with a boombox singing love songs if I thought for one second it would do me any good. Granted, she wasn't a kid when I imprinted, either, but Claire's not a kid anymore, Ateara. And it's not exactly like you knew her for very long as a kid, all things considered." Paul looked thoughtfully out the windshield before he continued. "If it was me, I'd take it slow. If she'll agree to meet with you, go into it trying to be the best friend that you can be to her and treat this like a new opportunity. You don't really know each other aside from the connection of the imprint. You're adults with lives and baggage. She's not the two-year-old you imprinted on. You're not the wide-eyed teenage freak you were when you imprinted. It's a fresh start. Yeah, it's fucked up, it's been a bitch for you, but you can't change the past and it's a fresh start, nonetheless."

Quil eyed Paul skeptically before shaking his head slowly. "You're getting soft in your old age."

"Shut up, I'm trying to be helpful," Paul growled, but his tone softened. "I honestly can't imagine what you've gone through and, despite what you might think, you have a whole pack behind you that just wants you to be okay."

The words humbled Quil in a way that he wasn't totally comfortable with, and he muttered out a quiet _thanks._

Intentional machismo overtook the atmosphere in the cab of the truck as Quil turned the key in the ignition.

"By the way, Ateara, if you ever tell anyone about this conversation, I'll deny it until the day I die and have Rach blackmail her brother into running you till your nose is in the dirt."

"Well, if you ever tell anyone that I'm agreeing with you over _Jared_ about something, I'll be forced to murder you."

They nodded stiffly at each other, and with the understanding settled between the two, Quil pulled out of the driveway and headed towards the center of the res.

* * *

Thirty minutes after her phone call to Ness, Claire had pulled herself together with a shower. After washing the funk out of her hair and off her body, and shaving legs that hadn't seen the sharp end of a razor in far too long, her stomach growled angrily, demanding a greasy breakfast from the diner down the street.

She was pretty sure that she had felt more emotions in the last three days than she had over the course of her entire life, and it was discomfiting. She'd come to a tentative, perhaps delusional peace with the idea that vampires and werewolves were now a part of her reality, though she had to admit that she'd put the notion on the backburner in order to prioritize the way learning she'd been imprinted upon had impacted her.

But Claire was innately simple despite the chaos she'd found herself in, and bacon and a Coke would do wonders for her mood. As she walked into the restaurant that looked like it had seen its better days, sneakers squeaking against the aged vinyl floor, the cheery oldies music floating through the jukebox calmed her inner turmoil and made her feel more like herself. She sat on a round stool situated along the bar that ran half the length of the place, making eye contact with the middle-aged waitress who was shouting orders at the line cook behind the window to the kitchen.

"Hey hun, what can I getcha to drink?" The toffee-skinned woman popped the chewing gum in her mouth and pulled a pad and pen from the black apron tied around her waist.

"I'll have whatever cola you've got, please."

The waitress nodded, plopping a laminated menu down in front of Claire before she disappeared around the corner of the dining room.

Claire looked around the room with an appraising glance, picking at a loose thread protruding from her last pair of clean yoga leggings as she made eye contact with the female half of an elderly couple that sat together in a booth by the door. She nodded politely at the woman and the sweet, smiling scene the two presented before turned her attention to the menu, eyeing the breakfast platter combo with a glint in her eye as her body reminded her once again that it had been too long since she'd eaten. She placed her order when the waitress came back over and then turned her attention to her phone.

Jules had sent her a few random messages over the past couple of days, memes about hot men and jokes about getting laid. No word from her sister, who was likely caught up with board meetings and product launches and her latest boy toy, as usual. Her dad was generally clueless and her mother was luckily too preoccupied with a crop of new middle school students to be concerned about Claire, so aside from a few "I love you" texts she hadn't gotten anything else from her parents.

Emily had called and left a voicemail, asking her if she was okay and making herself available to talk. Claire sent a brief text to her aunt to let her know she was alive and planning to head to the Black house for the day, promising to come by within the next day or two. Her cousin Noah had sent her a Facebook friend request, so she accepted it and scrolled through some of the pictures he had up. Most of them were devoted to his new girlfriend, his _imprint_ , Jenny, but Claire caught herself looking for one face in particular as she swiped through the sole, sparse album Noah had. His friends' list was a bust, too. Quil Ateara apparently didn't have a profile for her to stalk, and the pang of disappointment surprised her.

She realized then that she had his phone number. That he had hers. She pulled up the too-brief exchange of messages they'd shared on Saturday night when she'd done as he requested and texted him as soon as she'd arrived safely back in Forks.

 _Hey Quil! This is Claire. Made it back to Forks. See you at brunch. :)_

 _Hey there. Glad you made it safe. Sleep tight._

 _You too! Good night._

 _Good night, Claire._

Reading those short messages that she'd memorized every character of over the past couple of days had her grinning like a fool. Her fingers hovered over the keyboard, the ghost of a message itching within them, but she snapped her phone off hurriedly. She couldn't talk to him until she talked to Ness, until she knew more about this thing that was going on between the two of them.

A small part of her, that was less of a small part and more of a hulking, pulsating demand if she were being honest, desperately wanted contact with the man she hadn't been able to stop thinking about. But she would wait.

Claire wasn't an idiot. She knew he was hurting. Had been able to _feel_ it somehow. And it had affected her own temperament, too, like she was outwardly projecting the vibes she could feel coming from him out in the woods. But he had stayed away. He had respected her wishes and given her space, even if it hadn't been very _much_ space. She couldn't fault him. If there was even a shred of truth to what very little she'd been told about wolves and imprinting, or her laughable and fruitless internet research on the phenomenon, it was probably a miracle that he'd even been able to stay as far away as he had.

Especially considering how long he'd been without her, if the terrifying notion that she was somehow connected to him so deeply was to be believed.

A plate filled with hash browns and an omelet was plopped unceremoniously in front of her, followed by two servings of bacon and the Belgian Waffle she'd ordered. Effectively pulled out of her own head for the time being, she scarfed down her meal like it was her last, earning curious looks from Cora the waitress and a few of the elderly gentleman that sat in the stools to her left.

After she'd finished her meal and laid a twenty on the countertop to cover her bill and the tip, Claire once again found herself driving down the highway towards La Push. The ride wasn't as enjoyable without the company she'd had on Sunday, but the greenery soothed her, the lush forest along the shoulder of the road looming over the car as she sped down the two-lane road, cocooning her in a swath of cedar and spruce trees.

As soon as she crossed the border onto the res, Claire felt like a weight had been lifted from her chest. She wondered if it was because her body instinctually knew she was getting closer to where it wanted to be. Closer to _him_.

Her GPS directed her to turn left onto an unmarked road that was so naturally situated within the trees she almost missed it. The long gravel driveway twisted and turned its way over a mile into the woods before opening up to a vast clearing. A sprawling two-story log cabin was situated toward the edge of what appeared to be a small hill face on the far edge of the property, providing a beautiful scenic overlook of the Pacific Ocean and the sands of Third Beach.

Before Claire had pushed the gear shift into park, Ness had come out of the double entryway nestled under picturesque bay windows, waving a hand at Claire before crossing her arms and leaning into one of the logs supporting the large awning that covered a wrap-around porch.

As she stepped out of the car and began to walk towards the house, Ness's smile brightened at her. "Hey, Claire! It's nice to see you."

"Hi Ness. Thanks again for agreeing to meet with me. You have no idea how much I appreciate it." Claire ascended the steps to the porch, and Ness bent over and pulled her into a hug.

"Of course. I know this probably isn't the way anyone would've had you find out about all the supernatural mess going on around here, but that's life, right?"

Claire laughed and nodded as she followed the brassy-curled woman through the entryway and into the open foyer. A staircase to her right led up to the second level of the house, and beyond that she could see a sitting area with oversized leather couches and a massive television mounted above a stone fireplace. To her left was a spacious bathroom and the next door appeared to house the laundry room. Ness led her down a long hallway into an open-concept kitchen, breakfast nook, and dining area that held a farmhouse table identical to Emily's except twice as big. _Likely to accommodate Jacob's ragtag pack of wolves_ , Claire thought amusedly. Another set of bay windows behind the small breakfast table allowed a view of the back patio and the expansive yard beyond it that sloped downward and eventually coalesced into the sand of the coast.

"Ness, this place is absolutely amazing. You have a beautiful home." Claire thought her words were a gross understatement, but Ness just waved her off.

"To be honest, the main reason I love it is because Jake is here. Growing up in the family I did, the house and the surroundings don't mean much. Of course, the two of us designed it and built it, and we're raising my babies here, so it feels more like home than anywhere else I've ever lived."

"Have you always lived around here?" Claire stood in the middle of the kitchen, her hands fidgeting with the sleeves of her jacket.

"We bounced around for a few of years before I went away to school, before Jake and I got together and he took over from your uncle Sam when he retired from the pack, but we were never away from La Push for more than a few months at a time when I was young. I was a full-grown adult by the time I was seven, plus my family doesn't age, so we couldn't stay in Forks full time or people would've gotten suspicious."

"Wait—you fully matured in only seven years?" Claire's interest had been piqued. "How could your body possibly support that kind of rapid growth?" The words had come out before she could stop them, and Claire clasped a hand over her mouth as Nessie laughed. "Oh my God, that was so rude of me. I'm sorry!"

"Don't worry about it, hon. I'm an oddity even in the world of vampires and shapeshifters. I certainly can't blame _you_ for being curious." Ness laughed again and half-turned to the back counter where a brewing machine sat nestled into the corner. "I'm gonna make myself a cup of tea, can I make one for you? I have a wolf-pack-sized selection in the fridge and pantry, too, if you'd like something else."

"A cup of tea would be fantastic, thank you."

As Ness set about pulling out mugs and tea packets, Claire took a seat at a stool underneath the tall bar that separated the kitchen from the breakfast area. Resting an elbow on the counter and propping her chin on a closed fist, Claire asked, "So, where's the rest of your brood today?"

"Jake already went to work out at the garage this morning—said something about needing to get a handle on the books since Quil's been MIA and he usually takes care of all that."

Claire tried valiantly to pretend that this tidbit about Quil didn't interest her greatly, and if she failed, Ness didn't mention noticing.

"Charlotte's in Kindergarten at QTS this year and my grandpa and Sue took Will for me so you could have my undivided attention this morning." Claire blushed, but Nessie just smiled and winked at her. "I'll be honest, it's nice to have a break. I rarely have the chance to think with two little ones running around, not to mention the horde of overgrown wolf-children that always seems to congregate here," Nessie finished with a dramatic roll of her eyes and the two women shared a snicker.

"That would explain the grocery store you have packed into this kitchen, I guess. I don't understand how it's physically possible to eat so much and look so…" Claire drifted off, unsure how to continue without sounding like a moonstruck teenage girl.

"Attractive?" Ness said, humor lacing her tone.

"Yeah! It's insane how ridiculously good-looking they all are. It's enough to give someone an inferiority complex."

"Don't let any of them hear you say that. Most of them are too cocky for their own good as it is."

Silence fell over them as Ness stirred sugar into the steeping tea. Claire sat studying the natural patterns in the marble countertop, tracing a line with her finger as she thought about how she wanted to begin the conversation she'd come here for.

Sensing her discomfort, Nessie tried prompting her. "So, Claire, what do you want to know?"

Wracking her brain to no avail, Claire decided to start with the truth of the immediate moment and go from there. "Well, where do I even start? I don't even know what to ask, if I'm being honest. How do you know what you don't know?"

Ness smirked as she sat a steaming mug of tea in front of Claire.

"I guess I can start with the basics. You'll have to bear with me, though. Jake's better at telling the legends themselves, and I've only explained this craziness a couple of times before, but the circumstances were a lot different. Brady's imprint Farrin had grown up in the tribe hearing the stories. Elise, Rafe's imprint, basically fell in love with him the moment they set eyes on each other when they met at Gonzaga, and she barely heard a word me and Jake told her outside of the whole 'soulmates' thing."

Claire nodded, running a finger around the rim of the cup in front of her before picking up and taking a cautious sip of the hot liquid. "What exactly is an imprint? All I could gather from Wikipedia is that it's either learned behavior in animals during a critical period of development or a process of ingraining sexual preference into the brain."

Ness choked on the tea she had just taken a swallow of, spluttering a few dibbles down her chin. Claire looked up at her sheepishly, murmuring a quiet "sorry" before burying her nose back into her own mug.

After wiping her chin and taking a moment to compose herself, Ness took a restorative breath before answering. "The tribe does everything it possibly can to keep that kind of information secret, so you wouldn't find anything about it online. It's different for shifters, though. Jake describes it as gravity moving when the wolf sees that person. The imprint becomes the center of the wolf's universe; you're each other's soul mate."

The thought of herself as the center of Quil's universe, especially considering her absence from his life, made Claire feel sick, and it was her knee-jerk reaction to reply defensively. "So some supernatural yoo-hoo takes two random people and decides they belong together? No choice, no questions, just…wham, bam, thank you, ma'am? Seems kinda like a recipe for disaster."

Ness looked over Claire's expression with an appraising glance. "The imprint doesn't create a bond out of nothing, Claire. It's just one of many ways of taking two puzzle pieces and fitting them together in the way they were intended to be."

"I'm sorry if that sounded insulting. It's just…it's a lot to wrap my head around." Claire thought about what she'd been feeling the past couple of days, wondered if it was normal. "Is it just the wolf that feels it, or does the…imprint…do they feel it too? I could feel Quil out in the woods near my hotel the past couple of days. And I could tell that he was…upset. It's a little creepy, to be honest."

Ness shook her head, a smile ghosting across her face. "Yes, that's normal. An imprint can tell when the other one is near, maybe not as strongly or as prevalently as the wolf can, but it's there. And Claire, just a fair warning, wolves are possessive, even though their human side generally tries to tone it down. To be honest, considering how hard the last twenty years have been for Quil, I don't think it's something he can help."

"I don't mean him physically being out in the woods. Objectively, should that be weird? Yes, probably. All things considered…I'll cut him some slack on that. I was talking about being able to feel what he's feeling. This intense, incessant _need_ that I feel to be around him. Maybe that shouldn't be weird either if you take into account the people turning into wolves and the whole 'vampires are real' thing, but...it is."

"I would say think about it like this. You have someone in your life that you can look at and have a whole conversation with without speaking, right?"

Claire immediately thought about Jules and nodded.

"Right, okay. So just imagine this connection as something like that. He's your soulmate, as daunting of a prospect as that might seem right now. It makes sense that you'd have a heightened awareness of whatever's going on with him, that you'd be drawn to him, and vice versa."

Ness leaned over the countertop across from Claire, resting on her elbows and looking thoughtfully out the window. "I've always felt it, from the very beginning, from somewhere deep in my heart, in my soul, in my bones. When I was little, Jake was my best friend. Still is now, but back then, that's all we were. Even then, though, I could feel the pull to him. Could feel it change and morph as I got older and I needed different kinds of emotional support. I always trusted him in a way that I didn't even trust my own parents, to be honest, and everything that followed in our relationship, every stage we went through after that—it was built on that foundation."

They were silent for a few minutes while Claire chewed on this new information and the emotions that it stirred within her. Ness had gotten to live with her other half, to grow up and flourish alongside of Jake, while she had been left with only dreams about hers that materialized as a cold, haunting presence in her life. "Is it weird that I'm oddly jealous of you?"

Nessie furrowed her eyebrows and cocked her head. "Jealous? Why?"

Claire was uncertain of how to put what she was feeling into words. "You know that quote, 'Sometimes I feel my bones straining under the weight of all the lives I'm not living'? Well, I sort of feel that way, only about the life that I didn't get to live. I feel like I've missed out on something that was vitally important, and it's too late to do anything about it. It's…it's _crushing_ me to think about what should have been."

Ness was silent, unsure of what to say as her gaze bore into Claire's.

"What was it like, Ness?" Claire whispered, looking sheepishly into the counter and fiddling with her thumbs.

"What was what like?"

Claire gulped, feeling like she was about to cry, but she persisted. "What was it like to grow up with Jake? I was—I had a great childhood, I really did. My parents, they were great for the most part, if not a little distant, and I had Tallin, but Ness, I was so lonely. I never understood until now, but, just…what was it like?"

"Mostly amazing," Ness finally sighed, laying her palms flat in front of her along with the honest truth. "Don't get me wrong, we've had to fight through a lot of growing pains and blaze a lot of trails to get to where we are, but I've always had Jake to lean on, even when it was him that was giving me grief." She sniffed a laugh as her eyes glazed over, lost in some memory that Claire felt like she was intruding on. "I'm sure you would've gone through the same thing with Quil had you been here, but we went through a lot of heartache making the transition from best friends to what we are now. There were no legends to tell us how the imprint would turn out, and I think at first Jake, and probably my parents, too, expected that we'd only be friends. But how could I have possibly grown up around the perfect man for me, a man who knew everything about me—flaws and all—yet still cared so deeply, and ever have hoped to find anyone else who could compare?"

"Surely it must have been weird for you to fall for someone that much older than you, someone who grew up babysitting you and witnessed all your childhood bullshit?"

"It wasn't weird but there were times during my physical transition from adolescence to being a teen, when my hormones started going out of whack and I found myself _wanting_ Jake in ways I'd never thought of or felt before, that it felt…wrong? Add to that my mind-reading father and Jake freaking out because he could feel my changing emotions and it was almost enough to leave me with a permanent complex. I went away to college shortly after I turned six—I was physically and mentally in my late teens, but emotionally I was so torn up about being separated from Jake that I barely survived my first couple of months. I ended up staying for four years, though, just to get away, partly to figure out who I was outside of the shadow of the imprint and my family but mostly because my relationship with Jake was so _awkward_ at that point. Neither one of us was willing or able to progress things along, even though the imprint was pushing at us. We still talked every day and I saw him on my breaks, but being apart made us realize how important we were to each other, gave me the chance to finish maturing, to be responsible for myself, to meet other guys and realize how lacking they were. I think the separation was harder on him than he'll ever let on, but he knew it was what I needed and in the end, it worked out. He stayed with me at Stanford for a week after I graduated to help me pack up my apartment. Things finally came to a head and we could barely keep our hands off of each other for even a moment. We moved in together on the res the day after we got back and the rest is history."

Claire wanted to feel embarrassed at the connotations in Nessie's tone, but the adoration that bled through the woman's words told her everything she needed to know about the two-way street that was imprinting, and it just served to make her more heartsick.

"It probably would've been similar for you and Quil. A longer process, but it would've changed right along with you as you grew up. But Claire, the only thing I can tell you, the only thing I can give you to hold onto, is that everything happens for a reason. You may not know what it is or understand it, but you were where you were supposed to be. The same can be said for now. You're where you're supposed to be, here in La Push, and you've got an opportunity knocking on your door that I would advise you to think long and hard about before you pass it up. From experience, I can promise you that this is one of those things that's worth the heartache."

Claire wasn't sure that she had that kind of faith in fate, but outside wanting to know more about the particulars of what had happened so long ago, the past didn't, couldn't matter much to her now, otherwise it might suffocate her.

And if the past had been a bitch to her, ignorant and unaware as she had been, there was no telling how it had treated him.

"You said it's been hard on Quil. How bad was it, Ness?"

Ness shifted her weight from one foot to another and back again, the space between her brows creasing in her discomfort. "I think maybe that's a conversation you should have with him."

"Ness, do you really think he'd actually tell me?" Claire asked skeptically, crossing her arms over her chest and looking across at the Alpha's imprint incredulously.

"Probably not, though if you needle him enough he may feel compelled to give in. I don't want to put words in his mouth or speak for him. I just know what I saw; what Jake told me about being in his head back then."

Claire looked at her expectantly, cocking an eyebrow and tilting her head impatiently.

Nessie sighed in resignation. "Fine. But it would be easier just to show you."

"Show me? How?"

Ness came around the counter, stopping in front of where Claire had swiveled towards her on the stool. Lifting her hand towards Claire, she asked, "May I?"

Claire nodded, confused, and Ness placed a warm palm against her cheek.

Suddenly, Claire's vision went blurry and supernaturally-contrived images rushed through her mind.

 _Quil and Jake on Second Beach with Ness and Claire, a scene that zeroed in on the tenderness in Quil's eyes as his imprint called his name from where she sat in the middle of a tide pool. Quil in the middle of an airport terminal, screaming Claire's name in terror over and over again. Looking thin and waif-like, lying curled up in a ball on the floor of some kitchen clutching a photo of the two of them. Off to himself at a bonfire, staring out into the ocean looking miles away. Tears in his eyes as he lamented to a grown-up Ness that no matter how much he hurt or pined or cried, Claire didn't even know he existed. Ness and Jake walking into his destroyed living room on the eve of Claire's twenty-first birthday, seeing him hunched over the mantle of the fireplace with an empty fifth of whiskey in his fist and another shattered against the floor beside of a broken picture frame that entombed the smiling face of a three-year old._

Claire jerked back, pulling Ness's hand away from her face. "No more. I can't…" But she couldn't finish the thought. With a heaving sob, she fell against Ness's shoulder and cried harder than she ever had in her life, and as Ness wrapped comforting arms around her shoulders and pressed her face into the soft cashmere cloth of a sweater-cla shoulder, she felt every bit of the pain she could see that marred Quil's face in the images Ness had flung at her. "How am I supposed to fix that, Ness?" she moaned. "How do I fix twenty years' worth of…misery…when I don't really even know him?"

Ness rocked her back and forth as she made shushing noises, wishing for infinite wisdom in that moment and coming up short.

When Ness didn't respond, Claire could feel indignation rise up in her chest alongside of the overwhelming sadness that had settled there. "Why didn't he look for me?" she bit out after a wet sniffle. "If I mattered so much, if I was so important to him, why didn't he come find me?"

"Claire…" Ness hesitated, eyes narrowing as she hugged her tighter. "I don't know if I'm the right person to be telling you this part."

"Ness, please. I—there's so much shit that I've been hit with and I feel like I'm finally on the verge of understanding," she mumbled into her shoulder before pulling her face back to look the woman in the eye. "But I can't get all the way until I know all the facts. It's too… _heavy_ …at Emily's, and she can barely think about my mom without crying. I need the cold, hard, messy truth. No sugar coating. But I don't really know anyone else here so, just, _please._ No one suffering like Quil was, no one with that kind of devotion to someone, just lets them go. I need to know what happened."

Nessie sighed, but nodded her head in resignation. They pulled away from each other and Ness took a seat on the stool next to Claire. "He did look for you; he's been looking for you since you left. They all have. When you were young, they got close, but your parents always managed to stay one step ahead. Quil, he—he lost himself to the wolf for a while. It broke him every time he got close only to lose you again. I think eventually he and Emily resigned themselves to the fact that your parents weren't ever going to change their minds."

"You're telling me that my parents, my normal, average, _human_ parents, somehow managed to outsmart a tribe of super-wolves, a police chief, and wealthy vampires with limitless resources? That's a joke, right?" Claire's hands splayed out in front of her in a questioning stance, eyebrows raised in disbelief.

"It's not that simple. My aunt Alice, the one who can see the future, well—she can't see imprints directly so there wasn't really a way of tracking you down. Her finding you this time was nothing short of a miracle, only aided by decisions that you made for yourself. And think about what your dad does for a living, Claire. He's a forensic accountant. He managed to erase all of his financial records to go off the grid, and your parents changed your name after the last time Emily reached out and-"

"W-what?!"

Ness cringed, her mouth opening and closing before she gritted her teeth and squeezed her eyes shut, a look of unease settling over her face.

"Ness…what do you mean, my parents changed our last name?"

"Your name is…was…is Claire Locklear."

Claire sat up ramrod straight, a slapstick look on her face that she was sure wouldn't be any different than if Ness had just told her she was born a unicorn.

"Oh." She couldn't make anything else come out of her mouth. If the pain on Quil's face in Nessie's memories hadn't been a turning point for her, now she really did have something to be supremely angry with her parents about.

Nessie attempted to cajole her out of her stupor. "Claire, are you okay?"

"I don't know," Claire answered honestly.

"I wish there was something I could do to make this easier on you, Claire, but I don't know how."

This Claire Locklear was a stranger to her, and yet it represented everything she'd lost, every lonely, longing feeling that she hadn't understood, every strange phone call in the night, every dream of the past life she should've continued living.

But Quil had been somewhere in her subconscious her whole life, entombed in her mind by the feeling of companionship and safety he'd provided when she was still little Claire Locklear. While she hadn't remembered _him_ , per se, she'd remembered the way he made her feel. Just as Nessie had grown up and found nothing in the world that could compare to the deep, soul-abiding comfort of her imprint, neither had Claire Walker.

And suddenly, like an atom bomb had gone off inside of her and incinerated every instinct aside from the one now coursing through her veins, Claire knew what she needed.

"Nessie, I have to go. Thank you so, so very much. For everything."

Claire slid inelegantly off the stool, squeezing Nessie's hand before breezing toward the front door.

"Claire, are you sure you're okay to leave? I've dropped a lot on you today and I don't think—"

"I need to see him, Ness," Claire threw over her shoulder, not breaking her stride. She missed the smile that lit up Ness's face but caught her next words loud and clear.

"He's at the garage today. It's right off the side of the main road; you can't miss it," Ness called out after her.

As she reached her rental, Claire turned back toward Ness with an emphatic look of gratitude in her eyes. After waving a parting farewell, she eased into the car, turned the engine over, and after reiterating her decision to focus on the things she had control over to herself, she finally gave in to what she now knew her subconscious had been yearning for her entire life and sped off towards the heart of La Push.


End file.
